Parsha Thoughts & More

Parashat Bo: On the Old and the New

2012-01-26T08:55:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between the old and the new in Judaism this week.

In this week’s parsha, you have the first commandment given to the Israelite nation as a whole, hachodesh hazeh lakhem, the commandment to declare the new moon each month. The word for month, chodesh, comes from the word for new, chadash. But what is really new about the moon or about our lives each month? More or less, things in nature and in our lives proceed and cycle along as before, and yet we are commanded once a month to stop and declare them “new,” to see the sliver of the “new” moon as a rebirth.

The parsha also discusses the commandments concerning the Passover sacrifice, and here, too, there is a strange erasure of old and new. in the midst of the commands concerning the first Israelite Passover in Egypt – the paschal lamb and the blood on the doorposts – the Torah stops to talk about future Passovers for generations to come, the 7-day festival, the eating of matzah, the annual Passover sacrifice. It is as if, even before the Israelites in Egypt celebrated that first-ever Passover in Egypt – a new event – the celebration had already taken on the weight of tradition, the weight of something old and venerated, to be passed on forever. What was new had the feeling of something old.

Then there is the strange last line of the prayer (originally a Lamentations verse) we say upon returning the Torah to its ark: chadesh yameinu kikedem. “Renew our days as of old.” New or old? Which is it? The idea here seems to be that the ultimate redemption, which will be a kind of national rebirth or renewal, will look a lot like the old days, making a complete circle between past and future.

I’m not sure how to tie these pieces together. One thing that emerges from all of them is a sense that old and new are subjective matters, not issues of the historical past and future, but a kind of other zone above history, a place in which old and new do not contradict one another, but co-exist. What is old is new, as in the moon, and what is new is old, as in that first Passover. The ultimate goal is to be in the place we pray for when we say, “Renew our days as of old,” a place where old and new meet and feed off one another, where our attachment to tradition is the springboard for our energy and creativity in the world, and where the new projects we engage in have the weighty and sure-footed feel of antiquity behind them.

I think we actually have an instinctive understanding of the deep connection between the new and the old. When we hear an idea that feels right or true to us, we know it is right because it feels both familiar – as if we knew it all along somewhere deep inside us – and yet exciting and new. It thrills us with its brilliance and novelty and at the same time, connects to something deep inside us that is ancient and eternal. The Torah exists in this sphere, this place that is beyond the distinction between the old and the new, and in some way, maybe the Torah’s goal is to help us exist in this sphere as well.

Note: I invite other thoughts on this issue. I realize I have just begun to skim the surface and would appreciate input.

Parashat Va'era: On Miracles

2012-01-18T18:29:00.000-08:00

Why so many miracles? Why so many plagues that defy the normal order of the universe?

Training. These plagues were a kind of miracle-seeing training. This is a people whose ultimate job is to see God in the world, to bring out those divine sparks in every part of creation. But here they are, slaves in Egypt -- classically seen as the land of greatest defilement -- on the lowest rung of impurity, far from able to do any such thing. So what God does is make things clear to them. No subtle, disputable miracles here. Those are too hard to see at the beginning. You start by training the eyes, teaching them with large shows of power—bloody seas and frogs on every nose -- to see God in the world. It’s easier to see things writ large.

These are beginner miracles. The parsha starts by pointing out that God appeared differently to the patriarchs, who were more advanced miracle students. To them He was El Shaddai, which, as one midrash reads it, means – the God who said to the world dai, “enough,” the God who put limits on the world, created an order, the rules of nature. The patriarchs experienced God within this ordered framework and were able to see God’s hand without fantastic eye-popping sights like the splitting of the Sea.

The Israelites in Egypt, though, had sunk so low, that they were beginners, in need of the full sound and light show to be sure of God’s presence in the world. For their sake – and for ours – God broke the rules of nature, to show that those very rules – what normally keeps the frogs and lice and wild animals from overgrowing like a cancer – are themselves miracles, daily miracles of perfect order and balance. By breaking the rules, He showed that He also created and controls the rules, the daily working of the universe.

It is such daily miracles that it is our task to learn to celebrate. Those out of bounds miracles were a stepping stone for our people, a way to begin the process of a life devoted to perceiving the divine in the world around us.

Tradition offers us further forms of constant miracle-seeing training, the practice of saying simple daily prayers and blessings, meant to increase one’s awareness of the miraculous nature of every moment -- the daily rising and setting of the sun, the return of life to our slumbering bodies in the morning, the perfect balance of a body which takes in food and lets out waste. As we say in the Amidah prayer, we feel thankful “for Your miracles which are with us every day,” al nisekha shebekhol yom imanu. Every day, every breath is a miracle. It is partly our ancestors’ experience of the unnatural kind of miracle that paved the way for our appreciation of the natural kind.

Parashat Shemot: On Oppression and Thriving

2012-01-11T17:23:00.000-08:00

“What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.” So goes the popular saying, which traces back originally to Nietzsche.

Or maybe to the Torah. In reference to the Israelites’ suffering in Egypt, the Torah says, “But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out.” Suffering made them stronger.

Here we are at the start of the book of Shemot, the beginning of a long period of exile and oppression, an oppression planned by God for the people already at the time of Avraham. Why? Why not just go straight to the giving of the Torah?

According to the Sefat Emet, when God says, “I have taken note of you and what is being done to you [lakhem] in Egypt,” what He means by lakhem, is not “to you” but “for you,” i.e. “for your benefit” [lehana’atkhem]. The process of suffering – while taking its toll on the people in the short run – in the long run had some beneficial outcome, turned them into the kind of nation God had in mind.

New studies show that a moderate amount of adversity actually does make one stronger, makes a person more likely to be happy and satisfied in life, and also more resilient to further difficulties later in life. The key, according to Stephen Joseph, author of What Doesn’t Kill Us, is to be able to create a narrative about one’s negative life experiences in which one is not a victim, nor merely a survivor, but a “thriver,” someone who is able to take adversity and actually use it to his own benefit, as a tool of growth and greater life fulfillment.

The Torah models for us just such a narrative. The people begin as victims in Egypt, but ultimately that experience becomes the basis for a thriving religion. Judaism is a religion built out of the very stuff of this suffering. The ethical commandments related to the treatment of other people are powered by our memory of our own suffering; we must not hurt the stranger or the widow because we “remember that we, too, were strangers in Egypt.” And the religious commandments which structure our relationship to God are also powered by our memory of both the suffering and the salvation, by our sense of gratitude and by a sense of appreciation for the blessedness of everyday life which only one who remembers otherwise can truly fathom. Out of the straits of Egypt emerges a new nation, a new way of being in the world. We become thrivers, able to celebrate life through our national memory of tragedy.

Nor should the experience in Egypt be thought of as a one-time encounter with adversity, says the Netivot Shalom. The Torah is eternal; it speaks to our own daily personal struggles as well, no matter how small. What sense can we make of whatever suffering comes our way? How do we tell the story of our encounters with adversity? Are we victims? Survivors? Or thrivers? Can we learn to tell a narrative like that of Exodus, where we actually use life’s challenges to help us grow?

Parashat Vayehi: On Life and Death

2012-01-04T11:36:00.000-08:00

The popular song goes: Am Yisrael Chai, Od Avinu Chai, “The nation of Israel is alive, our father is still alive.” Who is Avinu¸”our father?” In the song, the word probably refers to our Father God. But the word also picks up on a repeated line in the Yosef story: HaOd Avi Chai? “Is my father still alive?” (45:3. See also 43:27). Here the father is Yaakov, and it is Yosef his son asking and asking about whether his father is still alive.

Is Yaakov our father still alive?

Yaakov Avinu lo met. Yaakov our father did not die, is the remarkable statement of the Talmud (Taanit 5b). What? But it says that he died? Well, no. As Rashi points out, the word met, dead, is never actually used with reference to Yaakov. The Torah says simply Vayigva vaye’asef el amav, “He breathed his last and he was gathered to his people,” but there is no mention of the normal concluding term used for Avraham and Yitzhak, vayamot, “And he died.”

Vayehi Yaakov. And Yaakov lived. So begins the parsha which ostensibly tells of Yaakov’s death. According to the Talmud, then, the parsha is aptly named; in some sense Yaakov never died but continued to be Vayehi, to live.

Perhaps Yaakov’s death is like Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s feigned death during the siege of Jerusalem in 69 CE. The story is told (BT Gittin 56a) that, in order to get out of Jerusalem and bargain with the Roman general Vespasian to save the rabbinic academy of Yavneh, Rabban Yochanan pretended to be sick and die so that he could get past the guards at the gate in a coffin. His own feigned death symbolized the end of an era of Temple-based religion. Was it a true death for the Jewish people? No. He made sure of this by creating a new life of Torah on the other side, by serving as a bridge figure—like the coffin that crossed the city threshold -- from one era to the next.

Yaakov needed to do the same for his children. Here they were on the cusp of a period of great national suffering in Egypt. Was this a true death? Would Yaakov and his ancestors and traditions die during this period? No. Just as Rabban Yochanan’s death was not real, so Yaakov’s was not. Why? Because the Jewish people are survivors. There can be no death where there is memory, continuity, tradition. The Jewish people survived the destruction of the Temple just as they survived the era of Egyptian enslavement. Why? Because Yaakov avinu lo met. Because there is this memory of an earlier period. There is continuity and connection, even across devastating events in Jewish history. There is often seeming death, like Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s coffin and like the deaths at the close of the book of Genesis. But somehow the spark is kept alive, the memory is preserved.

Why is Yaakov Avinu lo met? Because we remember him. Because we read about him in the Torah. Because we carry him with us across the thresholds of history’s twists and turns, just as his sons carried him across the border between Egypt and the land of Israel. As long as there are Children of Israel , Children of Yaakov, passing on his traditions, then his death, like Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s, is never final, but simply a bridge to a new era.

Parashat Mikets and Chanukah: On Becoming a Vessel

2011-12-21T18:07:00.000-08:00

Yosef the dreamer turns into Yosef the dream interpreter in the end of last week’s parsha (interpreting the dreams of the baker and the butler) and the beginning of this week’s parsha (interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams). This change signals an important transformation in Yosef; he has learned not to talk, but to listen, not to focus on himself, but to focus on others.

Through his experiences in the pit and in jail and as a slave, Yosef’s natural haughtiness and self-engrossment were challenged and he went through a process of what the Hasidic masters call hitbatlut, self-negation. This is not self-hatred, which is merely the flip side of self-love, and still entails a kind of egocentrism. No, this is the willing letting go of ego, the process of understanding one’s small place in the universe and the realization of other larger powers. Yosef began by speaking about himself – “I was in the center,” he says of his sheaf of wheat. But in the end, when Pharaoh asks him to interpret his dream, what Yosef says is: Beladay, “Not I!” Elokim ya’aneh et shlom Pharaoh, “God will see to Pharaoh’s welfare.” Not I. Yosef has emptied himself of ego.

In the process, Yosef turns himself into a kli, a vessel of God. He is able to interpret these dreams because he is able to channel God’s wisdom. Pharaoh sees this and says, “Could we find another like him, a man in whom is the spirit of God?” By emptying himself, Yosef makes room for the spirit of God, becomes an open vessel ready to be filled by the divine spirit.

A full container cannot be filled. If one is filled with oneself, there is no room for God. When a destitute woman approaches the prophet Elisha in the book of Kings, he tells her to gather as many empty containers, kelim, as possible (II Kings 4). Only then can a miraculous oil be poured into them. The first step is creating space, turning oneself into a kli, an empty vessel.

The symbol of Chanukah is the menorah. What is the menorah other than a kli, a vessel to hold oil or candles, a vessel to contain the lights that we light. We are like the menorah, says the Sefat Emet, a kli for holding light, divine light. When humans were created, God breathed life into their nostrils. We are containers filled with life and light from above. It is our task to empty ourselves sufficiently to be able to receive this light.

In a famous disagreement about how to light the Chanukah lights, Bet Shammai, unlike Bet Hillel whom we follow, prescribed the lighting of 8 candles on the first night, followed by a decreasing number each night until a single candle was lit on the last night. The Sefat Emet suggests that Bet Shammai understood the need for hitbatlut, self-negation, as part of the spiritual process. There is a need to reduce, to empty oneself further and further. Bet Hillel, who has us gradually increase from one candle to 8, is focused on the filling side, the outpouring of light in greater and greater quantities into our menorahs and us. Shammai understood, on the other hand, that in order to receive such light, we must also practice a kind of self-reduction, gradually emptying ourselves, like Yosef did, of our natural self-engrossments, and turning ourselves into vessels, vessels that are able to hear the dreams of others, vessels that are open to receiving and transmitting the divine light in this world.

Parashat Vayeshev: Hope at the Bottom of the Pit

2011-12-14T17:37:00.001-08:00

How quickly and how far does the family of Yaakov descend in this parsha! Hatred festers unchecked among the brothers, and turns to violence against Yosef who is thrown down into a pit and sold “down” to Egypt as a slave. The Torah draws a parallel between this descent of Yosef’s (hurad) and that of Yehudah, who “goes down” (vayered) from his brothers in search of a wife and lands in his own trouble. Indeed, Yosef’s descent leads the whole family to descend; in the short term, it leaves his father in a permanent state of mourning and his brothers with an uneasy sense of guilt, and in the long term, it literally brings the rest of the family to descend to Egypt as well, and eventually, to be enslaved there for hundreds of years.

The midrash characterizes the family’s state of mind this way: “Yosef was occupied with his sackcloth and fasting [presumably out of distress over his enslavement]; Reuven was occupied with his sackcloth and fasting [either out of remorse for not managing to rescue Yosef or out of remorse for sleeping with his step-mother]; and Yaakov was occupied with his sackcloth and fasting [in mourning for Yosef].” What a bunch! All depressed and regretful and suffering.

But the midrash does not end there. It turns to God: “And the Holy One blessed be He was occupied with creating the light of the Messianic King.” The light of the Messianic King?! The midrash is referring to the messianic line of King David, which is traced back to Peretz, one of the twins born in this parsha to Tamar and Yehudah.

Amidst all this descent and sackcloth, the seed of the future Messiah is born! The Yehudah/Tamar story takes place right in the middle of the Yosef story. On one side of it, Yosef is thrown into the pit by his brothers, and on its other side, Yosef is thrown into another pit, the pit of jail, by Potiphar. If we imagine the parsha as one large pit, then the middle, the very bottom, is the story of Yehudah and Tamar. It is out of the very bottom of that pit of misery and descent that a tiny light of future hope emerges.

The Slonmier Rebbe, in his work, Netivot Shalom, speaks about this phenomemon as the kusta deheyuta, the “tiny speck of life” contained in a seed when it is about to sprout and blossom. A seed must first rot and almost completely disintegrate into the earth before it can sprout, says the Netivot Shalom. Out of almost complete absence comes this tiny spark of future life.

Chanukah’s lights, lit in the darkest part of the year, contain a similar message. Out of the blackest of nights will come light, out of the hardest of times will come life, the tiny inkling of change and hope for the future. Like Yaakov’s family, we all go through periods of intense darkness in our lives, periods where it seems that there is no bottom to the pit of despair, that the pain will simply go on forever. The seed of the Messiah, born in the pit of Yaakov’s family’s darkest moments, is a reminder not to give up hope, that it is in fact from within this darkness that seeds of future life are sprouted.

Parashat Vayishlach: What I Like About Yaakov

2011-12-07T18:11:00.000-08:00

Avraham is someone I could never be. He is a great model of faith, but his example is difficult to emulate. He is never scared or doubtful. He never cries or cries out. He is stoic, disciplined and obedient. That’s why I’m glad we have Yaakov as an ancestor as well.

Yaakov is emotional. He cries when he meets Rachel. The commentaries try to explain why, but the Torah gives no reason, and perhaps there was no specific rational one. Isn’t that the way it is sometimes, all the emotion of days on end welling up and coming out unexpectedly? He cries again, later, inconsolably, when he thinks that Yosef has died.

He cries, and he also experiences great fear. First, after his ladder dream, he awakes and has a great fear. And second, in the beginning of this week’s parsha, when he hears that his brother – who wanted to kill Yaakov when they last met – is approaching him with 400 men, the Torah again tells us – Vayira Yaakov me’od vayetzer lo -- Yaakov was greatly frightened and distressed. He has intense emotions. The Torah says vayetzer lo, literally, “It was narrow for him.” He is in straits, suffering deeply.

The commentaries wonder about this expression of fear. Why was he fearful when God had promised him protection? Didn’t he trust in God’s promise? They explain away his fear in various ways – he was worried maybe he’d sinned and so the promise didn’t apply anymore – but it seems to me that the Torah is telling us that our ancestor, Yaakov, at least occasionally, had doubts. He was not an Avraham, stalwart and unwavering in his faith. There were moments when he was not sure.

And out of this doubt, out of this confusion and deep distress and struggle and fear, out of all those very human emotions, arose a new kind of religious outlook. For Yaakov is the first of the patriarchs whose passionate prayer we hear. “O God of my father Abraham . . . O Lord, who said to me . . . deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother . . .” (32:10ff).

Avraham never asked God for anything, except to save others, in Sodom, and there he did it methodically, rationally, politely. Yitzhak entreated God over Rivkah’s barrenness, but there is no description of the emotion that went with it, nor do we hear the words. But Yaakov, Yaakov is bursting with emotion, so that when he prays, it is a shavat ani¸ “cry of the afflicted.” He opens his soul and pours it out to God.

That is Yaakov’s way, not a clear, calm one like Avraham’s, but a struggling, searching one full of turmoil and emotional upheaval. Yaakov receives a name change and a body change (the wrenching of his hip by the angel) in this parsha just as Avraham received a name change and a body change (circumcision) years earlier. But if Avraham’s mark was a symbol of covenant and obedience, Yaakov’s is a symbol of struggle and strife. Even with God, he is locked in struggle.

They each have their place. We can hope at times to experience a little bit of the peace of Avraham’s faith, but we shouldn’t stop ourselves from pursuing the Yaakov route as well, the turmoil, the brokenness, the doubt, the struggle, and the cry, because this, too, or perhaps, this, especially, is a route to the divine.

Parashat Vayetze: On the Accompaniment of Angels

2011-11-30T17:48:00.000-08:00

This week’s parsha is framed by angels. At its start, as Yaakov leaves home, running away from his angry brother, he lies down and dreams of angels going up and down a ladder. The story then unfolds about his adventures away from home, in Haran -- his years of work for Lavan, his marriages and the birth of his many children. And then, at the end of this saga, on his way back home, Yaakov again encounters angels of God.

Angels at the beginning and angels at the end. Angels to my right and angels to my left. These are angels of accompaniment. They surround and accompany the story just as they surround and accompany Yaakov on his lonely, perilous journey.

But what good do they do him? What good does it do Yaakov to have had this vision of God and His angels at the start and end of his journey? God promises him protection in that initial dream, but other than one single instance at the end of the story when God warns Lavan not to harm Yaakov, we don’t see that Yaakov receives much benefit from the accompaniment of these angels.

Yaakov goes through an extremely difficult phase of his life here, symbolized by the repeated use of the rock in his story. He leaves home, apparently with no possessions -- why else would he use a rock as a pillow – and must work to earn his keep and his wives from Lavan instead of paying for them with gifts as his grandfather’s servant did years before with Rivkah. Work and hardship. Those are the operative words in Yaakov’s narrative. There always seems to be a rock blocking his way, as he is tricked by Lavan over wives and salary, toiling for 20 long years away from home.

So, I ask again, what good did those accompanying angels do him if they didn’t save him from such hardship?

Apparently, the purpose of accompanying angels, of a sense of divine accompaniment, is not to relieve hardship. Life is hard and angels don’t change that. What accompanying angels do is give one the strength to persevere in the face of such hardship. Right after Yaakov’s initial encounter with the angels in his dream, the Torah says, Vayisa Yaakov raglav vayelech. “Yaakov lifted his legs and went.” Rashi, citing the midrash, explains, “Once he heard the good news that he was promised protection his heart lifted his legs and it became easy to walk.”

His heart lifted his legs. Those angels couldn’t change the fact that Yaakov had a difficult journey to walk. But they could help his heart lift his legs to the task, could give him the faith and confidence and security to proceed undaunted. They could “frame” his hardship, help him see it through the lens of faith, as part of a story that ultimately has a good end. And this knowledge, this belief that all will ultimately work out for the better, this knowledge helped Yaakov persevere through it all. It gave him the energy, the excitement and the optimism to lift a huge rock off a well, again and again.

If we, too, have angels accompanying us – and sometimes I think that we do -- they won’t protect us from life’s hardships any more than they protected Yaakov. What they will do is lend us the confidence and security to carry on with those heavy rocks, help our hearts lift our legs to the journey with a spring in our step.

Parashat Chaye Sarah and Thanksgiving: On Being Blesed with "Everything"

2011-11-16T18:40:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving offers us an opportunity to find a sense of thankfulness inside ourselves. Avraham is a good model. In this week’s parsha we read:

Hashem berakh et Avraham bakol.

“God blessed Avraham with kol, everything.” (24:2). Everything? All? How can anybody have everything? And moreover, what exactly did God add to Avraham in this week’s parsha that he didn’t have before? He already had a great deal of material wealth last week and he already had two sons. If anything, Avraham sustains a loss in the beginning of this week’s parsha with the death of his wife Sarah. What does it mean to say that God blessed Avraham with kol?

God blessed Avraham with the feeling of kol -- a kind of fullness and a kind of stillness that made him feel completely satisfied, as if he did have “everything.”

Avraham attained this sense of kol at the end of his life, after experiencing the near loss of his son and the loss of his wife. There is some deep connection between loss and fullness here, between a sense of the fragility of life and an appreciation for its very richness.

This is a parsha surrounded by death; at its start Sarah dies and at its end Avraham and Yishmael die. In the middle is life and continuity, the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah. This is the way we live, our lives surrounded by the shadow of death, by the knowledge of the limited nature of our time here. The trick is to use this knowledge, as Avraham did, to somehow help us feel the blessing of kol, to help us appreciate the richness of the moments of this life we do have. If life went on forever, nothing would have any meaning. It is the potential loss which makes each moment so exquisite and full and thick.

It is for this reason that our children elicit in us such deep emotions; we are aware that their childhood will pass, and so, at odd moments when we are with them, we feel a fullness of heart that borders on nostalgia for the present, a sense of how very rich and complete our lives are, a sense that at this particular moment, we do have kol, everything one could possibly ever want. It is the knowledge that this moment will pass that makes it so intense and full.

Such moments of feeling kol are not easy to come by, though. Avraham was blessed with them from above, and indeed, they are by their nature of a divine source. We are all headed eventually to the place where Sarah, Avraham and Yishmael go in this parsha. We are fleeting; we are a kind of nothingness. Feeling that sense of kol is a way of tapping into the divine, the eternal. It is God who is All. Nachmanides quotes a kabbalistic source that compares this kol to a tree created by God which nourishes and provides everything in the world to all. When we feel a sense of kol, we are touching -- we are a part of -- this tree.

In the grace after meals, we first call God, hazan et hakol, “the nourisher of all (kol)” and then we ask Him to bless us as He blessed our three patriarchs, all of whom were blessed with kol: bakol, mikol, kol. We, too, ask for such a blessing – not the blessing of actually having everything, but the blessing of feeling that we do, of feeling the richness and fullness and deep blessedness of our short lives. To ask God for such a blessing while we are thanking Him for the blessing of food is, in a sense, enacting our own request, teaching ourselves, through small acts like the grace after meals, to feel how very rich and full our lives already are, to be aware of the fact that God already has blessed us with kol.

Parashat Vayera: On Divine Revelation

2011-11-09T18:33:00.001-08:00

This week’s parsha begins with a divine appearance to Avraham: Vayera elav Hashem. “The Lord appeared to him.” We normally think – that kind of revelation happened only in biblical times; it is closed to us.

But the Torah is eternal; maybe there is something to learn here about our own experience of the divine.

Immediately after the proclamation that “The Lord appeared” to Avraham, the Torah tells us that Avraham lifted his eyes and saw 3 “men” in the distance. The relationship between these two events – the divine appearance and the visitation of the three men/angels -- has been debated for generations. Were they two separate events or one? Was Avraham’s vision of the three people – guests to invite into his home – actually the content of his vision of God or merely coinciding occurrences?

The two stories are woven together in a strange and complicated way. Even at the end of the narrative, as Avraham walks his visitors out on their way, God is at the same time informing him of his plans for Sodom. The narrative switches back and forth between the three visitors and God in a seamless way, giving one the mixed up feeling of a dream, with one character blending into another. The implication is that for Avraham, the two entities, whether or not they were identical, were certainly interrelated in some profound way.

Avraham saw God by seeing (and helping) other people. His vision of God did not take place in solitude, but as part of his interactions with others. At the same moment that he made himself open to receiving visitors into his home, he also opened himself to receiving God’s presence. The experience of helping others and also of being able to receive from others – as he received the strangers’ good message here—made him feel the divine presence on this earth.

My therapist once pointed to a particular person in my life and said – She was an angel sent to help you understand something new about yourself and the world. People sometimes are angels. Can we sit in our open tents ready to greet them and to hear their divine messages? Can we see that our interactions with others -- our ability to give to the other, to hear the other, to receive from the other -- these are all ways of seeing and experiencing God?

It’s like the joke about the flood. A man sat in his house during a flood and waited patiently for God to deliver him. A boat came by and the people in it called – Come on up. But the man refused, insisting that God would save him. The water rose and he went up to the second floor of the house. Again a boat came and again he refused. Third floor and the same thing happened, until finally he drowned. He went to heaven and said to God angrily, Why didn’t you save me? God said: What do you think all those boats were?

Maybe we shouldn’t be so sure it’s impossible to see God anymore.

Parashat Lekh-Lekha: Our Own Journey

2011-11-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

People often wonder: Why did God choose Avraham? Unlike Noah, we don’t hear that he is a great tzaddik, “a righteous person,” before God speaks to him. So why did God choose him?

God didn’t choose Avraham. Avraham chose God, is the Sefat Emet’s answer. Notice that God does not call Avraham by name in that first call: lekh lekha. “Go forth,” He says simply. (Later, when their relationship develops – in the story of the binding of Isaac – God will call him by name, but here the call is more universal.) This lekh lekha call of God’s is present at all times and to all people, says the Sefat Emet. It is just a question of whether you choose to hear it and respond. Avraham was the first one who did.

This call is still relevant, in fact, essential. The Torah has been around for thousands of years now. We have a strong tradition we pass down from parent to child. And yet there is something that cannot be passed down. Each person, as an individual, needs to choose to heed the call. We should feel that we are each, like Avraham, discoverers of God.

Avraham was asked to leave his homeland, his birthplace and his parental home. We who are brought up in the tradition have no need to do this in order to find God. Or do we? Every person must make an Avraham-like journey. Tradition can be passed on, but faith in God, a religious feeling, cannot. It must be discovered anew inside each person.

And it can only be discovered by leaving something behind, says the Sefat Emet, by leaving behind the entrapments of our normal, everyday life. There is something about routine that makes one unthinking and unseeing. We need to somehow shed the impediments of the norm in order to allow ourselves to become a bri’ah hadashah, “a new being.”

This was Avraham’s strength, his ability to take a journey, to grow and change. He is not like Noah, a ready-made tzaddik, but he becomes greater than Noah over time, because of his ability to transform. By the the end of this week’s parsha, he is truly “a new being;” he has transformed his body – through the brit milah – and his name – from Avram to Avraham.

Avraham’s journey is a long one. He does not simply arrive in the land and it is over. The parsha details his many stops along the way. And the midrash names 10 different trials he had to overcome over the course of his lifetime. This command of lekh lekha, of walking or going forth, was an ever-present command of continued transformation, of never staying in the same spiritual spot.

Are we such travelers? Do we have the strength to shed the bonds that hold us in place, that keep us in the past? Do we hear and heed the call to go forth, to keep changing, ever becoming new beings, ever learning to see the world and God afresh, like our first ancestor? As the Sefat Emet says, the call is there. It’s just a matter of learning to hear it.

Parashat Noah: Finding Favor in the Eyes of God and Man

2011-10-26T18:27:00.000-07:00

The Moroccan havdalah includes the recitation of a biblical verse about Noah, the main character of this week’s parsha. VeNoah matza chen be’eynei Hashem. “Noah found favor in the eyes of God” (Gen 6:8, the last verse of last week’s parsha). The verse is chanted by the havdalah leader, and the listeners respond: Ken nimtza chen vesekhel tov be’eynei Elokim ve’Adam. “So, too, may we find favor and understanding in the eyes of God and man.” It’s interesting, that added word at the end, Ve’Adam. We want to be like Noah, but we don’t want to find favor only in the eyes of God, but also in the eyes of our fellow humans. Herein lies the crux of the Noah story.

Noah was a loner, for good and for bad. God chose him because Noah was able, as Bet Shraga teacher Morah Yisraela taught her second graders this week, to be a righteous person even when those around him were not, not a simple matter. The flood is a good image for Noah’s generation. He lived in a flood of evil, but somehow managed not to be swept away by the current, to stay morally afloat in a sea of wrongdoing, to keep himself perfect and pure, tamim, like an island onto himself, like the little ark-island he eventually inhabited.

But good is not meant to be done alone. Noah’s good is shut inside a sealed ark, inside himself, and so, in some way it eventually becomes suffocated and twisted. When he comes out of the ark, he seeks only his own intimacy; he becomes drunk and “uncovers himself within his tent.” The verb is vayitgal, a reflexive verb; he is closed in upon himself, doing the uncovering of himself to himself.

Such good cannot last. Our own internal good is partly a reflection of the goodness of those around us. Noah found favor in God’s eyes, but he did not find favor in the eyes of those around him. Finding favor is work. It is partly a matter of finding the good in other people, seeing those buried good points in others (nekudot tovot, in Rav Nachman’s terms) which in turn helps them see the good within us, and so a cycle of good is created.

Avraham is the model of this cycle of goodness. The midrash speaks of the many people he influenced and converted. If the symbol of Noah is a sealed ark, closed against a sea of evil, the symbol of Avraham is an open tent, drawing others in around him to the pursuit of good.

Later, when we hear of Avraham’s nephew Lot in Sodom, we will think again of Noah. Lot, too, had a certain righteousness about him, but one that was purely limited to himself. The evil around him was so great that the only way for him to keep it out was literally to shut the door on the hordes of evil-doers at his doorstep, waiting to come flood his home like the waters outside Noah’s ark.

There is something to be said for a closed door approach to evil. Noah stands as a model of great moral fiber and fortitude in his ability to withstand evil. And there are moments – Nazi Germany comes to mind -- when such strength of character is required. May we not be tested with such moments. The general work of the world, though, seems to lie mostly in the Avraham open door approach, the attempt to find good in the eyes and souls of those around us, the attempt to share our goodness with that of others and thereby increase good in the world. Ken nimtza khen be’eynei Elokim ve’Adam. So, too, may we find favor in the eyes of God and man.

Simchat Torah: On Imperfection

2011-10-18T17:27:00.000-07:00

“Imperfection and incompleteness are the certain lot of all creative workers,” wrote H.G. Wells. This is how we feel when we read the last words of the Torah – on the upcoming holiday of Simchat Torah – which describe Moshe’s death scene, standing atop a mountain looking out into the Promised Land which he will never enter. This man has accomplished so much; he took the people out of Egypt, led them through the Red Sea and through 40 years of desert journeys, and gave and taught them the Torah. And yet we leave Moshe with a sense of incompleteness; he has not achieved perfection; he will never arrive at that utopian destination.

This is the human state. But not the divine state. Immediately upon reading the end of the book of Deuteronomy, we begin the Torah again; we read of God’s perfect, orderly creation of this world in 7 days. There is perfection in the world; there is completeness; it is just not ours.

What are we to do then? Give up? If we can’t be perfect, is there no point? We return to the cycle of Genesis and hear once again how quickly the first humans made a mess of God’s perfect world. We can identify. Here we are at the end of a season of high religious activity. We promised ourselves we’d do better. Maybe we’ve changed a little, but have we arrived? Have we achieved our goals? In the Kol Nidre prayer of Yom Kippur eve, what we say is not “Nullify the vows of last year,” but rather, “Nullify the vows of the coming year.” We know already that we will not achieve them. We are hopelessly incapable of doing it completely right.

The figure of Moshe begs the question of imperfection, but it also provides some suggestions of how and why to nonetheless proceed. First, Moshe is the final and best example in the Torah of a successful divine-human partnership. Maybe alone we are imperfect, but look at what can be achieved together with God! The Torah is brought to earth. Moshe momentarily overcame his human imperfections by being a person who could stand atop a mountain –between heaven and earth – and catch glimpses of the Promised Land, glimpses of the divine. Where is our mountaintop? Shabbat and the Torah, each a piece or a taste of divine utopia, a taste that allows us, too, to move beyond our human imperfections.

Second, Moshe did not pursue this relationship alone but as a leader. His concern was not just his own relationship with the divine, but the continuity of this relationship, its transmission to others and to future generations. The Torah ends with the words asher asah Moshe le’eynei benei Yisrael, “which Moshe did before the eyes of the people of Israel.” His actions were “before their eyes,” or “for their eyes,” for their sakes, for their understanding.

And so we face our looming sense of incompleteness and imperfection this time of year with two tools – a sense of human-divine partnership and a commitment to transmit the Torah to future generations. Alone we are imperfect and incomplete, but together – together with God and with each other, thoughout the generations – we are somehow complete. We become, like the joining of the end of the Torah to the beginning of the Torah, not a line that ends, but a circle that has no end and no beginning, a part of eternity.

Sukkot: On the Joy of Flying

2011-10-11T16:51:00.000-07:00

In the desert, the sukkot were meant to provide the Israelites with protection from the elements, the sun and the wind. But today, when we celebrate the holiday of Sukkot and move out of our well-built, well-insulated homes to a shabby hut outdoors, it’s not so much protection that we feel, as openness, a breaking down of barriers. The skhakh roof above, mandated to have holes in it for seeing the stars, symbolizes this openness.

We need this feeling of openness. We are generally very constrained in our lives, bound in by our bodies’ limitations and by the obligations of work, community and home, and especially, by time. We have to be at a certain place at a certain time and there is no way to get there any faster than traffic or our feet will allow us. It often seems – and is true – that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get done everything we need to get done.

And so this holiday comes to break open the paradigm, to remind us not to let all those constraints come in the way of seeing the stars, of taking the time to think what this life is all about, what we are other than physical bodies taking up time and space in this world.

Such a glimpse of the stars, such a sense of divinity/spirituality, such a glimpse gives us intense joy. It is the like the joy of biking, the sense of a sudden release from the normal constraints of one’s physical body, of being lifted off of one’s feet, defying gravity and the plodding nature of our normal pace, and simply flying. Have you ever had a dream about flying in the air? The feeling is of a joyful release from constraint, a sense of doing the physically impossible, of freedom, of the incredible power of the spirit over the body.

Flying is indeed physically impossible. But sitting in a sukkah is not. It gives us a chance to sit within the confines of walls, to dwell within our physical constraints, and yet still see the stars, still feel the power of something above.

Yom Kippur: Who is Compassionate?

2011-10-06T05:39:00.000-07:00

Hashem, Hashem, Kel Rahum Vehanun. “O God, O God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness and truth, preserver of kindness for thousands of generations, forgiver of iniquity, willful sin and error, and One who cleanses.”

We say – or sing – these words countless times during the Yom Kippur service. They are a list of the 13 attributes which God revealed to Moshe as part of the forgiveness and healing process after the sin of the Golden Calf.

What are we doing when we recite these attributes? On the one hand, we are describing God, reminding God on this day of judgment that it is His basic nature to be compassionate and forgiving, that, as He sits on His throne of Judgment, He should judge us kindly.

I wonder, though, if we aren’t also describing ourselves, or rather, setting up for ourselves a model of the virtues we should strive to attain. God is not the only one involved in judgment. We as humans are constantly evaluating and judging ourselves and others. Perhaps on this day of judgment, when we ask God to take a kind approach, we are also asking this of ourselves, in imitation of Him.

This is where Jonah went wrong. God asked him to be an instrument of divine compassion in the world, to reflect the tenderness God feels toward His creatures, but Jonah wanted only to be an instrument of divine judgment. It is particularly on the Day of Judgment that we are asked, like Jonah, to learn to feel --- as God does -- tenderly and compassionately toward our fellows.

The task is not an easy one. We are all like the priest Eli – from the haftarah of the first day of Rosh HaShanah—who looked at Hannah standing in the sanctuary moving her lips but not making a sound, and presumed the worst, that she was drunk, when she was in fact fervently crying out to God in pain. We – like Eli – stand on the outside judging others, when maybe what looks bad is really not, when maybe – usually – we don’t know the whole story, don’t know the inner woes of our fellows’ hearts.

The key is to be, like God, rahum, compassionate or sympathetic. Our fellows’ offenses are often a sign of some inner disturbance or insecurity. Instead of taking offense and becoming angry and judgmental, we can ask ourselves why the offense was made, what troubled thought must have preceded it, and thus, like God, learn to move from “the throne of judgment” to “the throne of sympathy.”

Good judgment begins at home, in how we treat ourselves. Rav Nachman says that we need to learn to look in others as well as in ourselves for the nekudah tovah, the “good point,” the single good thing inside us. Yes, maybe we are full of faults and shortcomings, errors and misdeeds. But to focus on those is to give free reign to the waiting evil of sadness and depression. Instead, we should -- like God – look to the good, not to the Accuser, and find within us those points of good.

O God, O God, compassionate and gracious. O human, O human, be compassionate and gracious as well.

Parashat Nitzavim/Vayelekh and Rosh HaShanah: On Return

2011-09-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

A baby in her mother’s womb is taught the whole Torah, according to the Talmud. Then, when she is about to touch the air of the world, an angel strikes her mouth and she forgets it (Niddah 30b).

She forgets, but not entirely. They say that babies develop a taste for the foods that their mothers ate while they were in utero. If a baby has tasted Torah in utero, maybe he retains some special sense, some special feeling and yearning for Torah so that when he learns Torah later in life, the experience has a kind of déjà vu quality. It feels not so much like something new, but like a return to an old familiar place.

Return. Teshuva. This is the Hebrew word describing the process of change referred to in English as “repentance.” But as the Hebrew term implies, the process does not merely look to the past as a place of wrongdoing – a place from which to repent of one’s sins and move forward to a bright new future; the past also becomes a place to return to, an old home.

Teshuva is the process of finding inside oneself that pre-birth place of Torah. It is not the discovery of something new. It is the uncovering of something very old residing inside oneself, a divine spark, the point of contact between oneself and the oldest Being on earth.

Sometimes we have chance sightings of this eternal side of ourselves – whether through a Torah insight, a song or a walk in the woods. How do we know we have hit truth when we read/hear/see/feel it? Because it feels achingly familiar. The best ideas, the ones that feel most true to us, are the ones that somehow express something we already knew but never articulated. In that moment of insight, what we feel is not exactly a sense of novelty or discovery, but a sense of familiarity, of return, of the uncovering of some deep old forgotten truth.

And so if you’re looking to connect to Torah, you don’t have to go far, says this week’s parsha. The Torah is “not in the heavens” nor “over the sea,” but rather karov eleikha hadavar me’od, “the thing is very close to you . . . in your mouth and in your heart.” Look inside yourself. Return to home. It is like the man who goes searching all over the world for treasure only to find that it is buried in his own backyard. We are restless searchers, constantly climbing and reaching, looking for the miracle cure everywhere but inside ourselves, where it is and always has been.

It’s not easy to find that inner point to return to. As the midrash says of Hagar – who didn’t see the well in the desert until God showed it to her -- “We are all blind until God opens our eyes.” That is the function of the shofar on Rosh HaShanah. The blasts that broke down the walls of Jericho thousands of years ago are now called to break down our own exterior barriers – fear and insecurity, stress and anxiety -- to break down those barriers and uncover that point of peace and divine connection that is buried inside us, a faint in utero memory.

Parashat Ki Tavo: On Joy and Arrival

2011-09-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

Ki tavo, “When you arrive” in the land. What happens when you finally arrive at your longed-for destination, when you are full and fulfilled, when you have conquered and settled the land, and reaped the first harvest of your labors? What happens when you prosper and succeed? The parsha begins and ends with this sense of arrival, ki tavo at its beginning, and vatavo’u el hamakom hazeh, “When you have arrived at this place” (29:6) at its end. What happens when we arrive? How are we to deal with success?

The answer: Be joyful. The parsha begins with three ceremonies, all of which have explicit or implicit commands to be sameach, “joyful.” When you bring your bikurim, your first fruits, to the priest, the Torah says, Vesamahta, “And you shall enjoy all the bounty that the Lord your God has bestowed upon you” (26:11). When you tithe your produce, the Torah tells us you may not eat it when you are in mourning, implying that joy is the necessary companion to tithing. Also, when the tither proclaims: “I have done just as You commanded me” what he means to say, according to the midrash, is: samachti vesimachti bo, “I have enjoyed and caused others joy through it [the tithed produce]” (Sifre Dvarim 303). Finally, in the ceremony marking Israel’s arrival in the land, the Torah tells us to “rejoice before the Lord your God,” vesamachta lifnei Hashem Elokekha (27:7). “When you arrive,” when you reap your harvest, one of your primary obligations to God is to enjoy yourself, to take joy in your prosperity.

That isn’t hard, you say. It is easy to be joyful when you are prosperous and successful. Ah, but the Torah is not so sure. The second half of the parsha deals with the tochachah, the “rebuke,” a detailed description of the horrific calamities that will befall the people should they disobey God’s covenant. And what is the cause of such calamities? “Because you would not serve the Lord your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything” (28:47). People are capable of having everything and still not being joyful and glad.

Why? First, there is the question of whether one feels that he has in fact “arrived,” that he is satisfied and prosperous, that he has an abundant harvest. No one has a perfect life. There are problems and difficulties, illnesses and set-backs. Sometimes we lose sight of our essential blessedness amidst all the focus on these problems. We keep thinking tomorrow is the day we will arrive when in fact, we are already there, already full of blessing and abundance.

Second, we are too busy to be joyful. All of life’s little “blessings” take an immense amount of work. The more blessings – both at home and at work – the more stress, the less emotional space there is to be joyful.

Third, we feel too guilty to be joyful. We look at Jewish history, perhaps at our immediate ancestors’ suffering, and also, at the current suffering of others in the world, and we have survivor’s guilt. We feel we have no right to our blessings, our security, our comforts and our prosperity; we are not joyful, but quietly nervous and uncomfortable with our abundance.

And so the Torah teaches us that ki tavo, “when you arrive,” simchah, “joy,” is an obligation. Not a nice, pleasant option, but an obligation, a command. To receive gifts and not enjoy them is a slap in the face of the giver. Enjoy your blessings and share them with others. As the tither declares, I have experienced joy and caused others joy. Samachti vesimachti bo.

Parashat Ki Tetze:Helping Yourself and Others

2011-09-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

If you see your fellow’s ass or ox falling under a burden, “you must raise it with him” -- Hakem Takim Imo. Help him to raise it. Share in the burden.

Hakem Takim Imo. You will raise yourself along with him, says the Sefat Emet, playing on the doubled hakem verb and the word imo, “with him.” When you help someone else up, you also help yourself up. The more you share in your friend’s burden, the more you repair yourself and give yourself a boost. The Torah teaches us how to act kindly towards others not just for the sake of those others, but also for our own sake.

What would it do to you “to see” your friend’s burden and turn away? What kind of a hardening of heart would that simple act cause? How would it affect your sense of connectedness to others? The world would suddenly become a disjointed, uncaring lonely place, whereas if you can see and understand his burden and help him with it, then not only is he not alone, but neither are you.

If you forgot a piece of wheat in the field, and you took the trouble to go back for it even though you knew a poor person would otherwise collect it, you would feel tight-fisted and exacting. To leave behind a little for others is not just generous to others. It creates in you a sense of abundance, a sense that the world is a place that provides for its creatures. Your own open hand reminds you of God’s open hand and makes you feel well-cared for. Generosity is a form of well-being.

If you muzzle your ox while he is threshing and do not allow him to eat a little grain as he works, what kind of a work environment are you creating for yourself and those around you? Is the world that tight on time and revenue? Placing a muzzle on an ox also places one on you as well, making you feel constrained and anxious. The freedom of the unmuzzled animal also leads to a sense of freedom and peace in its owner. The world is ours to consume and enjoy as we toil our days away. We do not need to spend our days tethered and constricted.

But the sole purpose of the Torah’s edicts is not self-improvement, writes Rav Bigman, a prominent rabbi in Israel. The aim is not to constantly point back toward oneself, to accrue internal spiritual benefits, but rather to learn to properly “see” the other, to move out of oneself toward a true understand of our inter-connectedness. The aim, in other words, is to learn to raise up that burden imo, “with him,” to learn not to act for his sake alone, nor for one’s own sake alone, but for the sake of imo, of a sense of connection and togetherness.

Parashat Shoftim: On Being Complete

2011-08-31T19:07:00.000-07:00

Tamim tehiyeh im Hashem Elokekha (Deut 18: 13). “You shall be tamim with the Lord your God.” What does tamim mean?

One interpretation of tamim is shalem --complete or whole. When you worship God, you should use your complete self: your heart, your mind, your soul, and your physical body. The Hizkuni reads it this way and quotes the following Proverbs verse as an illustration: Bekhol drakhekha da’ehu. “Know Him in all your ways “(Prov 3:6). Use all the tools available to you to try to reach Him, to know Him and worship Him. Don’t just stick your head in a book. Don’t just pray and sing. Don’t just do acts of loving-kindness. Be well-rounded in your worship of God. As the author of Hovot HaLevavot puts it, we should make sure that our insides match our outsides, that our heart, our tongue and our limbs are all in agreement in their worship of God. Having one part of you do one thing and another do another makes a person dishonest and untrustrworthy. Our whole integrated self is what God wants of us.

This reading may explain the connection to the tamim of sacrificial animals. Such animals must be tamim, physically perfect and whole, without blemish, without any part missing. So, too, we aspire to be complete in our worship of God, to not leave out any side of ourselves.

Tamim also implies a single-mindedness of devotion, a clarity of vision which sees that there are no other gods, there are no other priorities, no competing values to rival our commitment to Torah. Tamim. Be whole-hearted. Do not let any other interests compete with God, siphoning off some part of you and causing you to feel conflicted and confused.

But we are conflicted and confused, unable to be tamim, as whole and blemishless as a sheep. We are humans, by our nature incomplete and restless, restless with worry about the present and the future, restless about our place in the universe, and not so entirely sure about which is the right way to live.

Yes, says the Sefat Emet. All of that is true. And so the verse is careful to say, not simply, tamim tehiyeh, that you will be perfect and whole on your own, but tamim tehiyeh im Hashem Elokekha, that you will be able to reach this kind of shleimut, this kind of wholeness, only by being with God, the sole possessor of shleimut, wholeness, as well as shalom, the peace that comes from such wholeness. It is only in God that we find rest for our restlessness, completion for our incompleteness. Read in this way, the verse does not just prescribe the appropriate attitude toward God, but also describes an opportunity for us to resolve a basic human need.

This tamim verse appears in the midst of a prohibition against the use of witchcraft in the attempt to know the future. People pursue such knowledge precisely because they sense their incompleteness, says the Sefat Emet. The search for the future is an expression of human anxiety and insecurity. But witchcraft does not ultimately alleviate this anxiety, says the Sefat Emet; on the contrary, sorcery aggravates it by setting up the false expectation that humans can know and control their futures.

Ironically, the avenue to wholeness is to give up our solo pursuit after wholeness and instead allow ourselves to be completed through God’s wholeness. On Shabbat, when we cease our restless running, we achieve this wholeness and peace; we receive an extra neshama (soul) from above to complete us. The moment we stop trying to complete ourselves, there is room for us to feel the completeness of the divine presence.

Such a feeling is a kind of prophecy. That is why, says the Sefat Emet, the verse exhorting us to be tamim is followed immediately by the promise of continued prophecy. “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your own people (Deut 18:15).” Instead of restlessly seeking a knowledge of the future, if we stand still –like a prophet -- and feel God’s presence, feel ourselves being completed by God’s completeness, we will have achieved the future, achieved a kind of eternal peace.

Parashat Re'eh: Understanding the Choices

2011-08-25T06:24:00.000-07:00

“See I set before you blessing and curse,” says Moshe at the beginning of this week’s parsha. Moshe is not just referring here to a one-time choice of following God’s covenant, but to the many daily moral choices that confront us each day. Hayom, he says. “Today.” Every day is a day of choices. And the key to making these choices is the name of the parsha -- Re’eh, “see” – being able to see, to understand the options before us.

How does one see properly, how does one know how to, each day, choose the path of blessings rather than curses?

The language of blessing and curse makes it seem that the choices are obvious, but the details that follow complicate the picture. There will be false prophets that attempt to lead one astray—they will predict signs that come true; they will speak in the convincing language of proofs. But the God they will speak of is one “whom you have not known.” You must learn to see, to perceive what is foreign and unfamiliar, what is too new to be trusted, what does not belong in the tradition. The distinctions are subtle and require deep sight and insight.

And then there are the times that you are drawn to be like others. You say to yourself, says Moshe, matay e’eseh ken gam ani? “When can I do that, too?” The wrong choices are often made by an attempt to be like someone else, to choose a path that is not one’s own, out of an inability to properly see and accept oneself and one’s own natural path. As my sister-in-law Sharon Anisfeld says in a song, “You can’t be who you are not.”

Not everything is black and white, a yes or no question. Eating meat outside of the parameters of the Temple, a good thing or a bad? On the one hand, one can only offer a sacrifice at this central location. On the other hand, the Torah says, if you have a desire for meat and you live far away, make a non-sacred meal of it and enjoy. It’s okay. But hazak, be strong in reference to one thing – You still may not eat the blood. There is room for flexibility – the path can be widened here -- but only up to a point. At some point, the point of blood, the path becomes narrow once more and one must no longer give in to desire but must practice strength, self-control and discipline. Perceiving where the path can be wide and where it must remain narrow is part of the process of learning to “see,” re’eh.

What is the reward for seeing and understanding and choosing the right path in all these situations? HaBrachah asher tishme'u. The blessing is that you will hear. The Sefat Emet says that the blessing is understanding itself, a new kind of hearing or perception. The more one practices the ability to see and make such choices, the more one can see and hear, the wiser one becomes, the closer to a deep divine understanding of the world, and that perception is the ultimate blessing.

Parashat Eikev: On Repetition

2011-08-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

The book of Deuteronomy, which we began to read a few weeks ago, is a retelling by Moshe of earlier parts of the Torah. The name Deuteronomy, like the rabbinic name for the book, Mishneh Torah, means “the second law.” Why do we need a “second” Torah? My oldest son said to me the other day: “The book of Devarim doesn’t have anything new in it.” That’s true, in a way. So why do we have it?

Its very existence tells us something about the Torah’s attitude toward life and learning -- that repetition is essential. Human beings don’t generally understand things the first time they hear them. We are slow learners. Hence in the first paragraph of the Shma, read in last week’s parsha, we say, Veshinantam levanekha – “you should repeat them [these words] to your children.”

We were slow learners back in the days of the desert, too, Moshe tells us, or as he says, am keshei oref, a people with a hard neck, a stubborn people who need to be shown and taught multiple times the same lesson.

Even the giving of the Torah happened twice. The first time, we were too busy with other things, too busy worshipping our gold idol to really listen, so Moshe went back up for another 40 days and brought back down a second set of tablets. Sometimes people can’t do things right the first time round. God doesn’t give up on us but merely tries again.

The same thing happens when it comes to entering the land of Israel. The first time we screw it up. We are scared and unbelieving. We need to practice our faith skills so that the second time, this time, we can really enter.

Getting the Torah and entering the land are two of the most important things that happen to us as a nation. And they both happen twice. The message is that these things are not really one-time events at all, but works in progress. We are strivers, learners, always receiving the Torah and always on the cusp of entering the land.

In this week’s parsha, we read the second paragraph of the Shma, another instance of doubling, as is the command to recite the Shma “when one goes to sleep and when one awakes,” twice a day. The second paragraph of the Shma begins with its own linguistic doubling, Vehaya im shamo’a tishme’u, “If, then, you surely hear [or obey].” Rashi comments that the first shamo’a refers to old Torah, and the second tishme’u to new Torah. “If you listen to the old, you will be able to hear the new.” If on the other hand, you forget part of the Torah, says Rashi, interpreting another doubled verb, then you will end up forgetting the entire Torah. Each repeated action reinforces itself and creates a path for the future.

The Torah is continually unfolding, says the Sefat Emet about Rashi’s comment here. That is part of what it means to have a “second Torah.” The implication is that we are never finished receiving, never finished learning the Torah. We are to take the stance toward Torah which the book of Deuteronomy takes, a stance of shamo’a tishme’u, of repetition and novelty, understanding that we are part of the process of continued revelation through our repetition or retelling of the Torah.

Parashat Masei: On Travel and Encampment

2011-07-26T02:28:00.000-07:00

The Torah honors the journey, the process. What matters is not just the final destination-point, but also the journey itself -- each and every leg of it. And so the Torah takes the time in this week’s parsha to name the 42 stopping points of the Israelites’ journey through the desert. Vayisu . . . Vayahanu. . . Vayisu . . . Vayahanu. . . They travelled . . . they encamped . . . they travelled . . . they encamped.

Such is our life. As the Sefat Emet says, we humans are not like angels, standing still on one leg. We have two legs, in constant motion. The human is a mahalakh, a walker, a traveler, with his feet spread apart, like the letter ayin in the end of the word nasa, to travel. We constantly search and move and grow and change. The fact of our movement is as important as where we end up.

Not to take part in this journey is to be dead spiritually. The Torah aptly contrasts the movement of the Israelites out of Egypt to begin their desert sojourn with the Egyptian burial of their dead. “And they [the Israelites] travelled out of Ramses . . . And the Egyptians were burying those whom God had smitten (Numbers 33:3-4).” Those are the options: either movement or burial, the ultimate standing-still, the ultimate rootedness to place. Not to take part in this journey is to be buried alive.

But the Torah does not describe a life of pure movement to the exclusion of rest. The Torah does not write: Vayisu . . . Vayisu . . . Vayisu . . . Travel is interspersed with encampment, movement with rest, change with stability. Such is the rhythm of life and such is the rhythm of the week, according to the Torah. Six days of struggle and change, and a seventh day, Shabbat, of hanayah, encampment, and menuhah, rest.

Perhaps the one is meant to lead to the other. It is no accident that the Torah begins with Vayisu and concludes with Vayahanu. Travel leads to encampment, struggle and change to equanimity.

On the one hand, travel can be extremely discombobulating. You don’t have a home. You don’t have all your belongings. You don’t know the local culture, the language or the people. And they don’t know you. You are stripped of all the things that normally give you a sense of comfort and identity and belonging. And yet, out of this experience of movement and homelessness, can come a deep sense of peace, a sense that one’s identity is simply one’s skin, that one’s home is simply the world. Travelling provides a kind of clarity of vision about what really matters. Stripped of one’s normal environment and comforts, one discovers that one still exists without them. One discovers that one is lighter, more flexible, and less dependent on one’s environs than one thought, and this knowledge is indeed a kind of peace, a new kind of hanayah, encampment == a coming home within oneself.

Tefillat HaDerekh, the prayer said while travelling, asks for one thing over and over – peace, shalom. Make our journey end in peace, O Lord, and sustain us and make us arrive at our destination in peace. We pray that we travel in peace – that we are not physically harmed along the way – but perhaps we are also praying that this journey be a movement toward peace within the self . Let its lesson, its spiritual destination point be peace and rest, like the Israelites who travelled and then encamped. Vayisu . . . Vayahanu.

On the Three Weeks

2011-07-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

The three weeks between the fast days of the 17th of Tamuz and the 9th of Av -- days when we mourn the loss of the two Temples in Jerusalem -- are days of hishtokekut and ga’agua, longing and yearning, says the Slonimer Rebbe in his book Netivot Shalom. We do not cry over a loss of the past, but rather we cry as an expression of our yearning for something in the present and the future, our yearning for the divine light that was so clearly present in the Temple.

The experience of the Temple, according to some, was an experience like that of Mount Sinai, the highest form of prophecy and revelation of God. This we do not have today. Our world is a place devoid of clear signs of God, a world in which it is easy to be an atheist.

And yet there is in us this yearning for more, this searching, aching, reaching feeling. This feeling is born out of this sense of God’s hiddenness from the world. It is because we live in a world without the Temple, without a revelation like Mount Sinai, without the perfect Garden of Eden, that we have such feelings of yearning, and so a religious sentiment is born within us. Our yearning is very productive. It creates a kind of presence in the face of a world of absence. As the Italian author Erri de Luca writes, “When you feel that you are missing someone, it is not an absence, but a presence. It is a visit; people, villages from afar have arrived and become your guests for a little while” (The Mountain of God). The act of longing turns absence into presence.

So it is with our feelings of longing for Jerusalem, for a place of God. Through our yearning we create a kind of presence. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, we say, may my right arm be forgotten. I cannot forget my right arm. It is here, constantly, along my side. So, too, through our yearning we create a kind of presence for Jerusalem; we change the reality. The Temple is no longer a thing of the past, to be buried and forgotten but very much a piece of us, something we carry through life with us, like a limb.

There is an important message here about the power of yearning, the power of tears. The Netivot Shalom says that through our feelings of longing during this period, we actually bring closer the redemption, we actually begin to rebuild the Temple, begin to build within ourselves dwelling-places for the divine light. Our yearning has an impact. “Her tear was on her cheek,” says the Ecclesiastes verse, referring to the mourning of Jerusalem. The Netivot Shalom says that this verse means that the tears made an impression on her cheek. Normally tears just roll off, but this type of crying has an impact, makes some impression on the world, creates a kind of presence. Sometimes the power of such yearning creates an even stronger presence than the thing itself that we miss, says the Netivot Shalom.

The cries that emerge out of our world of absence can be incredibly creative, producing something of great beauty and spiritual weight. So are the cries of two of our megillot. The one, Eichah, Lamentations, that we read on the 9th of Av. And the other, the Song of Songs, which we read on Passover (and in some communities, every Friday evening). The Song of Songs is a song which encapsulates these feelings of yearning, as the two lovers desperately search for each other, coming close, but never quite reaching one another. Perhaps it was for this reason that R. Akiva said that the whole of the Torah is holy, but the Song of Songs, the holiest of the holy. It is the search, the yearning, itself – in the face of absence -- that reaches the highest spiritual heights. The Israeli singer Shuli Rand sings a beautiful, painful song about such yearning as well, in which he says to God, “And I continue, in the dark, to dig, and to ask and to beg – Ayeh? Where? Ayekha? Where are you?” It is out of his very sense of divine absence – Where are you, God? – that Rand creates a beautiful, aching sense of spiritual presence.

This three week period of mourning is like the drawing of a black background for a picture, says the Netivot Shalom. On top of this black background, the most beautiful bright colors can be painted. Emerging from our period of deepest darkness and the acute awareness of absence in the world, we begin to create a presence that leads to the highest moments of the High Holidays and Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret, the beautiful colors and celebrations of the fall holidays.

Parashat Pinhas: Everyone's Torah

2011-07-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

This week’s parsha includes a remarkable story about a group of 5 women, the daughters of a man named Tzelafhad. The women approach Moshe and the other leaders and the whole nation of Israel with a request to receive an inheritance of land -- despite the fact that females do not normally inherit -- because their father, who is no longer alive, had no sons.

Now these 5 had 2 strikes against them in the hierarchy of the time. First, they were women. Second, their father, as they tell Moshe, was a sinner; “he died because of his sin,” they say, and one rabbinic tradition identifies him as the “Shabbat wood gatherer” who was stoned earlier in the desert journey. Surely it could not have been easy for such women to approach the elite leadership. Vatikravnah, “They came close,” the Torah tells us, an unnecessary word, except perhaps to highlight their bravery, the great effort it must have cost them merely to step forward.

How are such daughters of a disgraced family treated by Moshe and by God? With respect and honor. Moshe does not dismiss them, but acknowledges his own ignorance, the limits of his knowledge and the validity of their question. He does the question the highest honor it can be given -- he passes it on to God. And God, for His part, says ken, yes, true, are the words of these women. They should indeed be given an inheritance.

The question concerns the inheritance of the land. But at stake here is also the inheritance of the Torah. Does the Torah only belong to Moshe, to the scholarly elites of each generation, or does every person hold a helek, a portion, even the lowest, most rejected members of the society?

Torah tzivah lanu Moshe , goes the famous saying – Moshe taught us the Torah, but Morashah kehillat Yaakov -- it is an inheritance for the whole congregation of Jacob. It does not just belong to the Moshe’s of the world, but to the entire congregation.

The Torah gains much from this perspective. Moshe received most of the Torah from God at Sinai, but somehow he did not remember or did not know this particular law. It took the daughters of a sinner – it took the perspective of an outsider – to bring about the revelation of this law. As the midrash says of Moshe, HaDin she’eyn atah yode’a,, hanashim danin oto. The law which you, Moshe, do not know, these women legislate. We are all humans, unable to see all sides of the truth; to understand the Torah to its fullest capacity requires the perspective of not just the Moshe’s but also the women and the sinners of the world. The Torah gains something from each person’s contribution.

We never hear that Moshe was the smartest person in all of Israel. When it comes to Torah that isn’t what matters, because even the smartest person is a single human and cannot possibly understand, transmit and reveal the Torah alone. We are only told that Moshe was the humblest person. Humility is a quality that allows room for others, that offers honor and a place at the table – in the land, and at the table of Torah – to each person who cares enough to come forward.

Parashat Balak: The View From Above

2011-07-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

In this week’s parsha, the attempt to curse the people of Israel by King Balak of Moab and the prophet Bil’am of Midian is thwarted by God, and the curses are turned into blessings. But the parsha does not end there. It concludes with a story about the Israelites falling prey to the lures of Moabite women who entice them into the idolatrous worship of Ba’al Pe’or. Why does this episode immediately follow the tale of Bil’am? Why doesn’t the parsha simply end – more happily – with the blessings of Bil’am?

The two stories do not fit well together; there is, if anything, a great contrast between them: they paint opposite pictures of the nation of Israel. Bil’am’s blessings speak in lofty poetic terms about the greatness of Israel; it is “a nation that dwells apart” and its dwelling places are good, tov, which the rabbis say implies a high degree of modesty. By contrast, the events of the Ba’al Pe’or incident show Israel not dwelling “apart,” but joining with others in an unseemly manner, not creating modest, private homes, but acting in a most lewd, immodest manner. The sense of contrast here is well captured by the name of the idol, Pe’or, a word related to the modern Hebrew word pa’ar, meaning “gap.” Ba’al Pe’or comes to teach us about a gap, the gap between ideal and reality.

The two stories describe Israel from different vantage points. The one –Bil’am’s picture – is a prophecy, expressing an idealized vision of the people from afar. Bil’am speaks from on high, looking down at the people from the distant vantage point of various mountain-tops; ki merosh tzurim er’enu, he says -- “As I see them from the mountain tops, gaze on them from the heights.” From this lofty view, one can see the people’s great potential and imagine their great future. The Ba’al Pe’or story, on the other hand, speaks of the nitty-gritty daily reality of the people, its earthly struggles with the basest of desires.

The Mount Sinai story tells of a similar dissonance between ideal and reality. A momentous lofty task is given to the people from on high at Mount Sinai, the destiny of achieving “holiness” through the path of the Torah. “I am your God; do not worship any aside from Me,” says God. Meanwhile, down below, at the bottom of the mountain, the people create a molten calf to worship, dancing and eating around their idol. The reality of the people’s concrete deeds forms a sharp contrast to God’s lofty expectations.

Who are we? A people of “good” tents or a wild people of guilty pleasures? The one represents our idealized potential and destiny, our inspiration, our goal. The other represents the reality of the struggle to put that potential into practice, to actualize the dream in the real world. The Torah does not simply tell us about the dream. We cannot reside forever in the world of ideals, of prophecy, of mountain-top visions. Yes, we need such visions to inspire us. But ultimately, the Torah is meant to be lived in this world, its ideals to be put into practice, to be given concrete form in the nitty-gritty of our daily lives. The Ba’al Pe’or story expresses for us the gap between Torah ideal and our lived reality--it highlights the difficulty of our task, the enormity of the bridge we need to construct between heaven and earth.

Parashat Hukat: On Seeing the Well

2011-06-29T11:50:00.000-07:00

“We don’t have water. We don’t have food. We don’t have. We want. We need. Give us.” Complaints. Whining. A feeling of insufficiency, of worry about the present and about the future, of not being sure where the next drink or meal will come from. This is the mood of the Israelites during their desert stay. They remind me of very young children, infants or toddlers, who, when hungry or thirsty, cry because they have not yet learned that their needs will be taken care of, are not yet secure in their sense that the world provides.

The response to such complaints is two-fold. First, the absent necessities must be provided. Second, there needs to be some response to the sense of insecurity, the outlook of absence. There is a difference between someone who, though hungry after a long day’s travel, looks forward to the meal that awaits him at home, and someone who, equally hungry but also destitute and penniless, is not sure there will be any food at home for him to eat. The two may be equally hungry but their perspectives on their future create entirely different sets of emotions regarding their present predicament.

Moshe’s failed task in this parsha was to turn the Israelites’ hunger from the one type to the other, to provide them not just with water, but also with a sense of security about their future water provisions. The Sefat Emet points out that God wanted Moshe to speak to the rock le’eyneyhem, “before their eyes,” to open their eyes, he suggests, to the abundant water that already exists for them in this world, hidden beneath the exterior of a seemingly dry rock. Hagar, too, was blind to the existence of such water, and sat crying in the desert until God “opened her eyes” and allowed her “to see” the well that apparently had already existed. This teaches us, says the Sefat Emet, that we are all like blind people until God opens our eyes for us. Moshe’s mistake was in not opening the people’s eyes to the infinite bounty that God has provided in the world, in not providing them with a perspective of fullness and calm. Yes, he gave them water, but it was a one-time miraculous extraction of water dependent on his own hitting of the rock. God wanted him to show the people that the water is always there for them.

In God’s explanation of Moshe’s wrong-doing he uses the word he’emantem, from emunah, or belief. “You did not believe” or, better “you did not make others believe” in Me. The people needed a sense of emunah, of trust and faith in the future, a sense of security that Moshe was not able to teach them. We often think of emunah as something that only the very pious possess, but the truth is no one can live without some amount of it. Without it, we would be a constant bundle of nerves, worrying that tomorrow there would no longer be air to breathe, that the earth would stop giving forth produce and the water sources dry up. We have to live with some amount of faith that our needs will be provided. It gives us a sense of calm, a feeling of fullness even in the face of occasional insufficiencies.

The Israelites are in a state of major transition in this parsha. Two of their three leaders die in the parsha, and the third’s term-end is foretold. After 38 years of wondering in the desert, they are also now for the first time beginning to fight the various peoples who surround the land of Israel, the Edomites, the Canaanites, and the Emorites. They are leaving the sheltered world of desert miracles and approaching a land-based reality. One-time miracles like Moshe’s hitting of the rock to provide water are no longer what the people need. Such miracles simply increase a sense of dependency and anxiety about the future. The people need to learn to see and rely not on miracles that defy nature, but on the natural miracles of the everyday, the rain and the sun, the rivers and the plants.

This transition is epitomized by the two songs that mark the beginning and end of the people’s time in the desert. The first is quite famous – the song that Moshe and the people sing at the parting of the Red Sea. The other appears in this week’s parsha and begins with the same phrase, az yashir. Here, however, the song is sung not in praise of an awesome one-time water miracle, but in praise of the daily provision of water by a simple well. “Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, O well – sing to it – the well which the chieftains dug” (21:17). At this stage what the people need – both physically and emotionally -- is a well, a continual source of water, a sense of security and sufficiency, of deep flowing reserves that will not dry up. From here on they will indeed no longer voice complaints, no longer exist in this insecure state, but instead begin to see clearly what Hagar saw – that there are wells even in the desert, that we need not fret over our future, because God has provided a world rich with all that we need. Such a perspective is not a fact, but a kind of faith, a way of looking at the world with confidence, security and a sense of wholeness.

Parashat Korah: On Jealousy

2011-06-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

Jealousy is one of three things that “remove one from this world,” according to Pirke Avot. In this week’s parsha we see an example of some jealous individuals who were indeed removed from this world. Korah, along with Datan and Aviram and 250 other followers, jealous of the high positions of Moshe and Aharon, incited rebellion and were punished by being “removed from this world”-- some were swallowed up by the earth and some consumed by fire.

That is the simplest meaning of the Pirke Avot teaching, but perhaps there is another. Perhaps it is not so much an external punishment that removes the jealous from this world, but simply a natural consequence of their actions. Jealousy is a very lonely emotion. It pushes others away, makes their happiness and success less important than one’s own. I am jealous of that person’s success. I wish they were not so successful because it makes me feel bad about myself. I am only thinking of me, removing myself from any sense of connection to these others and their success, thereby “removing myself from this world.”

I could think otherwise: Look at how successful that person is. She is my friend/my sibling/ my fellow Jew/my fellow human being, and therefore her success is good for me. We live together, are part of the same community, so that her success rebounds naturally onto me. I take pride in her achievements. I am not removed from this world, but intimately tied to all those in it, consider myself a part of their happiness and success.

This other attitude is one we quite naturally adopt toward our children and our students, as the rabbis note in another famous phrase: bikhol adam mitkane hutz mibno vetalmido. A person is jealous of every person with the exception of his child and his student. Why? Because with respect to children and students, it is easy to take ownership of their success, to understand and see clearly that our own success is intimately connected to their success. With respect to our children and students, we do not “remove ourselves from this world,” but on the contrary consider ourselves intimate partners with those around us.

The key is to adopt the same sense of pride and owndership and solidarity with respect to others as we do with respect to children and students. That was part of Moshe’s greatness. A few parshiyyot ago, Moshe is confronted by the possibility of rival prophets, Eldad and Medad, prophesying not under his auspices. Moshe does not look upon them as rivals. His assistant Yehoshua suggests that he imprison these prophets, but Moshe says: Hamikane ata li? Are you jealous on my account? If only all of Israel would have God’s spirit rest upon them! He does not look at these prophets as threats to his own position or his own ego, but as students or children, whose spirit should be nurtured and encouraged. He does not remove himself from connection to them through jealousy, but on the contrary, understands that they are fundamentally on the same team, working toward the same goal, the goal not of individual ego enhancement, but of bringing God’s presence to dwell among the people of Israel.

Jealousy removes one from this world. When Datan and Aviram were about to be swallowed up by the earth, Moshe told the people around to separate and move away from the tents of these two, to make it clear, in other words, that these two had separated themselves from the rest of the nation, had, through jealousy, literally removed themselves from association with others. It is, on the contrary, by cultivating feelings of connection with those around us like those of a parent or teacher that we ultimately master the lonely jealousy monster and learn to be truly joyful at the success of others, to understand ourselves to be a part of all human successes.

Parashat Shelach: On Fear and Bravery

2011-06-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

My 4-year-old son was brave this past shabbat. He wanted to join his father in the men’s section of a synagogue in Ashkelon, a city we were visiting for the first time. Through the glass door he could see rows and rows of men, but his father was on the side, obscured from view. Little Asher opened the door, walked a few steps, and returned, saying he was too scared to proceed. A few minutes later, he tried again, and again returned. “This is your chance to be brave,” I said. “You’re scared. That’s fine. But you can do it. You just have to be brave.” That’s it. He went in and did not come out, determined to be brave.

What struck me about this little incident is that it would not have worked to tell him that the reality of the situation was nothing to be frightened of -- I’ve tried that unsuccessfully at other times -- that the men would all surely help him and certainly not hurt him. Fear is in the eye of the beholder. For a 4-year-old, going into that sea of men three times his size in an unknown space was not unlike the experience of the Israelite scouts, approaching an unknown land filled with people of gigantic proportions. Both, from their vantage point, felt there was good reason to be scared.

As the Esh Kodesh, the Hasidic rebbe of the Warsaw ghetto writes, Calev – one of the two lone good scouts to come back with a positive report of the land -- understood the futility of arguing about the reality of the situation with the other scouts. They said that the cities were well-fortified and that the people were of gargantuan size. He did not say: “No. The people are tiny. The cities have no walls.”

What does Calev say instead? Alo Na’aleh veyarashnu otah ki yakhol nukhal lah. We will surely go up and inherit it because we will be able to accomplish this. He does not deny the reality they describe or attempt to convince them that their fears are not justified. The problem is not the reality – as the Esh Kodesh notes from personal experience, sometimes the reality is in fact insurmountable – no, the problem is not the reality, but their attitude, the way they have allowed fear to triumph. And so Calev does not argue with them, but instead encourages them to move forward in spite of their fear, to swallow hard and step through that door into an unknown world of giants.

Note that in the Hebrew two of the phrases Calev uses contain doubled verb forms: Aloh Na’aleh and Yakhol nukhal. It is as if Calev is trying to gently encourage them to keep trying, to work on themselves again and again to be brave. That is the only way to conquer fear, to ineffectuate its power through sheer persistence, through experience piled upon experience. The next time little Asher approaches a scary men’s section, he will be that much less frightened.

No, Calev doesn’t try to argue with the other scouts or the people about the reality of the situation. The point here is not reality, but attitude. Lo nukhal la’aolot – “We will not be able to go up,” the other scouts say. Fear destroys the possibility of action, of “going up” to a higher space, makes us all feel like 4-year-olds, small and vulnerable, or, as the scouts themselves put it, like tiny “grasshoppers.” In the face of such fear there is no argument other than faith and courage, there is no response other than positive thinking. “We can do it. We can.”

Shavu'ot: Our Torah

2011-06-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

Why do we read the book of Ruth on Shavu’ot? In order to teach us that people’s good actions are also considered Torah, says the Sefat Emet. The book of Ruth describes the hesed, loving-kindness, shown by Ruth toward her elderly mother-in-law, and then in turn, the hesed shown by Boaz to Ruth. These acts of human loving-kindness become Torah, says the Sefat Emet, and we read about them on Shavu’ot—the holiday on which we celebrate the giving of God’s Torah on Mount Sinai -- to show that human deeds in the world are also part of Torah, that humans are also involved in the continuing unfolding and creation of God’s Torah in the world.

Our partnership with God in the Torah project is well-depicted by a midrash which says that on Mount Sinai, the luhot (tablets) were jointly held by Moshe and God, each holding an equal 2 tephahim measure on opposite sides. When my children jointly make a birthday gift for someone, they carry it over together to give it to the person, being careful to each hold an equal part of the gift to show that it is an entirely joint project. The Torah is our joint project with God.

On Shavu’ot we usually speak about God’s giving of the Torah. The Sefat Emet points out that Shavu’ot actually works in two directions. We humans, in our prayers, call it “the time of the giving of the Torah,” to commemorate God’s gift to us. But God, for His part in the Torah, calls the holiday, Yom HaBikkurim, “the day of the giving of first fruits,” to commemorate our gifts to Him. The relationship is reciprocal; we both give and receive.

Such a reciprocal approach to Torah means that we carry a tremendous responsibility with respect to the Torah, that we cannot merely sit back and receive, but must take seriously our commitment to preserve and participate and create Torah. Concerning Boaz’s kind gifts to Ruth, the midrash says, “If Boaz had known that God was going to write about him, ‘And he handed her roasted grain,’ he would have given her stuffed veal.” Boaz didn’t realize he was creating Torah, that his deeds would be recorded for posterity as a part of the Torah. If he had understood this, if he had understood the gravity of even the minutest of his actions, he would have acted with even greater generosity and joy; he would have taken his hesed to its extreme. Such is the implication of the Sefat Emet’s approach to Torah, a sense of responsibility and gravity concerning our actions in the world, a sense of the grandness of our task as partners in God’s Torah.

Parashat Bamidbar: Desert Thirst

2011-05-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

Upon driving out of the city limits of the little Negev town of Yerucham, where we are living this year, all one can see for miles is desert--barren brown mountains stretching out to the horizon. My first nervous thought is always: Do I have enough gas? Do I have a cell-phone? Do I have enough water?! One feels the desert’s barrenness, that it is a place of absences, a place without, without color or vegetation, without the basic necessities of life –water, food, shelter.

This week we begin the fourth book of the Torah, Bamidbar, “In the desert.” What happens “in the desert?” Almost everything of importance to the Israelite people. It is here that they become a nation, here that they receive the Torah, and here that they begin to develop a relationship – with all its ups and downs – with God. Why “in the desert?” Why in this place of emptiness and absence?

There is something important about the emotional experience of this barrenness. The rabbis say that only one who makes himself “like a desert” is truly capable of receiving the Torah. The Sefat Emet explains that a person needs to be aware of his own barrenness, of his own intense lacks before he can be filled by the great presence of the Torah. A person who views himself as already complete will not be open to receiving the gifts of the Torah. The more one feels that one is missing something, the more one feels incomplete, like an open, empty vessel, the more room the Torah has to enter and fill the vessel.

Maybe being “like a desert” means cultivating a kind of longing or yearning – a thirst like that of the parched land. Thirst is an intense awareness of the lack of a basic necessity; our desire for Torah should be like thirst, a desperate and intense longing. All the complaining the Israelites did in the desert, the constant crying out for water, the yearning for the watermelons and squashes of Egypt, perhaps this desert experience of longing is meant to be translated into a spiritual longing, a longing for God and for Torah, a deep awareness of absence which leads to the yearning for Presence.

In modern Hebrew, the word to express this emotion is ga’agua. It can be used to express the feeling of missing someone who is temporarily absent, but it can also be used to express a kind of yearning for something greater than oneself, a sense of oneself as essentially “missing” in some way and therefore striving, reaching for something beyond the self. The desert experience of lacking something like water is the physical parallel to this basic human emotion, an emotion which is at the core of religious pursuit.

As the Psalm -- also found in a popular Shabbat zemer (song) -- goes:
Tzamah nafshi lelokim, l’el hai. "My soul thirsts for the Lord, the living God (Ps 42:3)."

Parashat Bekhukotai: On Walking

2011-05-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

Im bekhukotai telekhu, “If you walk in My statutes.” Thus begins this week’s parsha. The parsha continues with a description of the bounty that will ensue if you follow the Torah path -- the rains and the crops and the driving away of all enemies -- and the terrible events that will befall you if you do not follow this path. What does it mean “to walk” in God’s statutes?

The Sefat Emet says that the word telekhu, “walk,” reminds us that we, as human beings, are each considered a mahalakh, a “walker,” someone who does not stand in one place but moves, changes, and grows. Make yourself into a walker, a grower. How? Through the Torah. Do not think the Torah is something that one acquires on one leg or in one day. The Torah is a form of “work,” of occupation, of long-term growth. That is why the brachah (blessing) we say over the learning of Torah is la’asok baTorah, “to be occcupied in the Torah.” The Torah is not an acquisition, but an engagement, an occupation.

The Sefat Emet further points out that the word bekhukotai uses the word khok, which, according to the rabbis, is a special term for those laws whose reasons are not understood by human beings, laws like kashrut (keeping kosher) and shatnez (the prohibition against mixing certain materials within a fabric). Approach all Torah as a khok, says the Sefat Emet. Do not think that you are big enough to understand it, but have the humility to approach it, to do it, without fully understanding. And, sometimes, says the Sefat Emet, out of this sense of your own smallness, out of this humble approach to Torah, will come great revelations. If you do the Torah simply because you must, then in the course of doing it, its reasons, its essence, its meaning will become clear to you.

The rabbis say that skhar mitzvah mitzvah. The reward of observing one commandment is the ability to do another commandment. The Sefat Emet reads this phrase differently. Sekhar mitzvah --the reward of doing a commandment simply for its own sake, without understanding it, is mitzvah -- the gift of coming to a deeper understanding and appreciation of that mitzvah itself. Inner meaning comes after action, as a reward for action.

Im Bekhukotai telekhu. If you walk in My statutes. The suggestion here is to walk, to make one’s humble way through the pathways of Torah, like the Israelites in the desert, faithful explorers on a long journey. We cannot see clearly the destination point of our journey; we cannot master the Torah; we can only walk and explore and grow with a spirit of openness, dedication and discovery.

What is the reward of such an attitude? Great bounty. The Torah speaks of physical bounty, but the Hasidim point out that there is also great spiritual bounty which results. The Torah does not simply say that geshem, rain will fall, but gishmeikhem, “your rain.” Plentiful will be your rain, your own spiritual bounty, if you walk in this humble way through the Torah and the world.

Parashat Behar: On Equality

2011-05-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

Amidst a discussion of the Yovel, the Jubilee year, the Torah says, twice, lo tonu ish et amito, “do not wrong one another.” The rabbis say that the first ona’ah refers to property -- one should be careful not to wrong another by underpaying or overcharging in a sale. The second ona’ah, say the rabbis, refers to ona’at devarim -- wronging someone through the use of words.

My question is: What does ona’ah have to do with Yovel? Why is this prohibition against mistreatment of your fellow given here? With regard to the ona’ah of property, the answer is clear; the Torah warns people to be careful to take into account the number of years remaining before the Yovel year – when property automatically returns to its original owner – in determining the price of property. But what about ona’at devarim, which the Talmud says is the more serious offense of the two? How is wronging someone through speech connected to the Yovel year?

The Yovel year is the 50th year after 7 cycles of 7 years each of Shmita, of working the land for 6 years followed by a land sabbatical on the seventh. On the 50th year, not only is one forbidden to work the land as in the shmita year, but two other important things happen. First, all land returns to its original owner. At the time, land was wealth. If a family became impoverished and sold its land, in the yovel year the land was returned to them and they got a chance to start again on equal ground with their fellows. Second, all Israelite slaves are freed. Again, such a state of enslavement would have been reached through poverty, and by being automatically freed in the yovel year, people were guaranteed a fresh start even if they had fallen on hard times. On the yovel year, the Torah says, dror, “freedom,” was declared throughout the land; no Israelite must be master or slave to another, and all must stand on equal economic footing in terms of land holdings.

The prohibition against ona’at devarim seeks to instill a similar sense of equality among people. Consider some classic examples of such forbidden speech acts – to remind one who was previously not religious or a convert of his past; to say (as Job’s friends did) to one who is suffering that he probably deserves it because of his sins; to ask a person a technical question in a field in which the questioner knows the questionee has no expertise. The common denominator in all these examples, as Nechama Leibowitz points out, is that a person is trying to show that she is superior to another person, to point out the inadequacies of another in order to raise her own stature by contrast. Such a sense of superiority is prohibited by the Torah. One must treat one’s fellow as an equal, in speech – by avoiding ona’at devarim -- as well as in deed – by freeing slaves and returning land on the Yovel year.

The use of the verb ona’ah is telling in relation to this issue of equality. In the rest of the Torah, the object of the verb is someone weaker than oneself, the ger (“stranger”), the orphan and the widow. Here the object of the verb is first ahiv, “his brother,” and then amito, “one another.” The Torah seems to be saying: Do not treat your brother, your equal, as if he is in any way less than you. Treat him as an equal.

Ona’at devarim is an issue that comes up a great deal, especially among siblings, where there seems to be a constant need to show one’s superiority; “Did you go to that park with your class today? I already went there last week.” Sometimes, there is some resistance to admitting one’s intentions. “But I was just asking a question. I just wanted to know.” The matter is a delicate one, depending to a great extent on one’s inner thoughts and intentions. It is for this reason, says Rashi, that the Torah says, immediately following this prohibition, Fear your God. Only God knows one’s true intentions.

Both the mitzvah of Yovel and the prohibition against ona’at devarim speak to the same issue, an attempt to remind us of the basic equality of all humans, or, as the Sefat Emet would put it, of our common divine source. We are none of us slaves and none of us masters, but all equal in the eyes of God.

Parashat Emor: The Many Layers of Sefirat HaOmer

2011-05-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

This week’s parsha sets out the Torah holiday calendar, from Shabbat to Passover, Shavu’ot, Rosh HaShanah and all the rest. Included in this discussion is the special period of time we are currently in the midst of, called Sefirat HaOmer, the counting of the 49 days between the holidays of Passover and Shavu’ot.

This is a confusing season. On one level, the count from Passover to Shavu’ot seems to be a happy time. We have the security of having left Egypt and the joyous anticipation of receiving the Torah on Shavu’ot. It is also spring-time, a time of excitement and rebirth, and also a time of harvest; Passover marks the beginning of the barley harvest and Shavu’ot, the wheat harvest.

Overlaid on top of this clear sense of joy and anticipation, though, are layers of complicated and painful Jewish history. According to Jewish law, certain mourning practices apply during this period, like the prohibition against haircuts and live music. These mourning practices commemorate a terrible plague suffered by the students of Rabbi Akiva in Israel in the second century, but they also point to the many other tragedies suffered by the Jewish people over the centuries. And then there is the modern calendar of commemorations, from this week’s Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Commemoration Day, to next week’s Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’Atzma’ut, Israeli Memorial Day and Independence Day, to Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, which we celebrate in a few weeks. These modern holidays are also a mix of sadness and joy, of difficult memories of our recent past and a sense of the blessedness of the current era.

It turns out that, as the Haggadah makes clear, we did not just suffer one era of travail and redemption in Egypt, but many, “in every generation.” Redemption, then, is not a permanent state – we left Egypt and will never return – but a kind of merry-go-round or roller coaster of historical ups and downs.

Where does that leave us emotionally? Sad or happy? Excited or despairing? Where is the sense of stability in the midst of the whirl of Jewish history? How are we to bear this emotional turmoil?

Amidst all this craziness, we are on a path, a 49 day path, which makes its slow but steady progress, one calmly ordered day at a time, toward a goal, the receiving of the Torah. The Torah stands, like the mountain it was given on, as a steadying point of light in the distance, a mark of stability and continuity amidst our stormy history. Things change; people come and go; Jews suffer and celebrate; but always there is the Torah, standing for eternity with its laws, its values and its stories, keeping us company in good times and bad.

Parashat Kedoshim: Some Thoughts on Kedushah (Holiness)

2011-04-28T02:07:00.000-07:00

The Torah does not say we are inherently a holy people. It says, in the start of this week’s parsha – kedoshim tehiyu. “You shall be holy.” Holiness requires work. It is not in our nature, but in our conduct. It is a path, a process, a staircase to climb. The Hasidic author of Sefat Emet points out that elsewhere the Torah says of kedushah, holiness, that it must happen hayom umahar “today and tomorrow.” Today and tomorrow forever, he says, because holiness is not a state but a never-ending process, a constant yearning and striving to do better.

What is it that we are aiming for in kedushah? The traditional explanation understands kedushah as a kind of separation or restraint, learning to control one’s appetites, especially in relation to food and sexual intercourse. Indeed, the statement kedoshim tehiyu at the beginning of this week’s parsha comes on the cusp of the list of prohibited sexual relationships at the end of last week’s parsha. And our own parsha concludes with a discussion of prohibited foods and sexual relationships, speaking of all these separations explicitly as an issue of kedushah.

But kedoshim tehiyu also seems to point in another direction. The parsha is filled with laws – from ethical business and legal edicts to a prohibition against revenge and laws protecting the poor and the stranger. Rav Sabato, a contemporary Israeli rabbi, says that the Torah gives us a double goal in this week’s parsha – kedushah and hesed, loving-kindness. On the one hand we are asked to hold back from things in the world that we would, in the natural course of things, be free to take part of. On the other hand, we are asked to give to others, to the world, more than is our natural obligation to give. We are asked to take less and give more, to practice both restraint and generosity.

Pe’ah, the practice of leaving a corner of one’s field unharvested for the poor, exemplifies how these two opposing tendencies actually work together. In this single mitzvah, one is asked to practice both restraint and generosity; hold yourself back from harvesting your entire field in order that you have something to give to the poor. Similarly, the prohibition against adultery is meant not only to hold you back from performing an improper deed, but also to preserve the family one is committed to, to insure that attention is sent in that direction and not another. Restraint and generosity go together in many mitzvot.

Learning to be both self-restrained and generous is a way of learning to be like God Himself. Kedoshim tehiyu ki kadosh ani, “Be holy for I am holy,” says God, both restrained – as in the kabbalistic notion of tzimtzum, God’s self-containment -- and open-handed, overflowing with the generosity of life.

We have reached the middle of the book of Leviticus, also called Torat Kohanim, the “Law of the Priests.” Perhaps this prescription to be kadosh like God Himself is meant only for the elite, for some special class of people like the priests. No. Kedoshim tehiyu is preceded by a call to all of Israel, kol adat benei Yisrael, which the rabbis say means that the parsha was given in a large communal gathering called hakhel. This kind of kedushah, this kind of striving for both restraint and generosity, is expected of every person in Israel. We are not inherently a holy people, but we are marked by our communal desire to become one.

Parashat Hachodesh: On Renewal

2011-03-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

This week, in addition to the regular parsha, we read the last of the 4 special parshiyyot before Passover, Parashat HaHodesh, which deals with instructions given to the Israelites in Egypt concerning their preparations for departure and for the first Passover sacrifice. The parsha begins HaHodesh hazeh lachem rosh hodeshim--this month (i.e. the month of Nissan) is to be the first of months for you. This statement is traditionally understood as the very first mitzvah (commandment) given to the nation of Israel. It is the mitzvah of sanctifying the new moon each month and keeping a particularly Jewish calendar, a lunar calendar, with all its sacred holidays based on the determination of the new moons.

Why is the mitzvah of the lunar calendar the very first mitzvah given to the nation? The Hasidic author of Netivot Shalom points out that the moon is a symbol of eternal change and renewal. Just when the moon reaches its tiniest point, to the point of almost complete darkness, there is suddenly the tiniest glimpse of a new light, the start of a new moon that will eventually be whole and bright. So, too, each person is capable of such renewal, of such hithadshut, of moving out of the darkest of states into light.

Such renewal is not just a hope, but also a hiyuv, an obligation, a commandment. In the Haggadah we say, bekhol dor vador hayav adam lirot et atzmo ke’ilu hu yatza mimitzrayim--in every generation a person is obligated to imagine that he himself has left Egypt. Every person is commanded to undergo that kind of radical spiritual transformation, to view himself as changing, becoming someone entirely new, moving out of darkness and into light.

Sometimes there is really not that much that has changed in us from one month to the next. But we are commanded to sanctify time, to go out and see the new moon and announce its arrival. We are commanded, in other words, to see, to note, to feel the novelty of time, of each new month as it comes, not to let time slip idly by, but to stop and take note of it, to relish it, to feel its preciousness, its sanctity, its uniqueness. Shehecheyanu vekiyamanu vehigiyanu lazeman hazeh--thank you God for sustaining us to reach this particular special moment in time.

In the morning prayers, we say that God is mehadesh bekhol yom tamid ma’aseh breishit, that He “renews each day the work of creation,” referring to the daily gift of new sun-light each morning. The sun is God’s job, a sign of His daily renewal of creation, but the moon is our territory. The midrash says that for two thousand odd years before the exodus from Egypt, God Himself would sanctify and announce each new moon, but that once the people of Israel came along, He passed this occupation on to them. Keeping track of the moon is the human version of God’s daily hithadshut, our attempt to participate in the constant renewal of the universe and of ourselves.

Parashat Shemini: On Brotherly Love

2011-03-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

Moshe the leader and Aaron the High Priest, two brothers, are in charge of the dedication of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. After 7 days of preparation and practice, they reach the eighth day, the day on which the first, opening, purifying sacrifices are to be brought, and God is to appear to the nation in the Mishkan. It is a remarkable day, full of excitement, tragedy and pathos, and also full of brotherly concern and care. It is these brotherly interactions that I want to follow through the story.

First, after Aaron performs all the prescribed rites and sacrifices, he comes out to bless the people. Presumably, at this point, God is supposed to appear to show His approval. Instead the next verse tells us that Moshe and Aaron both came out and blessed the people, and only then did God’s Glory appear (Leviticus 9:22-23). Rashi plays out the following scenario: Aaron, seeing that God has not appeared after his performance, calls to Moshe in embarrassment, and Moshe -- acting quickly to avoid further embarrassing Aaron -- prays to God for mercy, and then appears, together with Aaron, in front of the people, and this time God’s Glory does appear.

Next, Aaron’s eldest two sons, after bringing forward an unwanted offering of incense, are consumed by divine fire. Obviously, they have done something wrong. Aaron, in addition to being grief stricken, must have felt some shame, some sense of divine reprobation. Moshe’s response to Aaron seems to be intended precisely to counter such feelings, to give him some small amount of pride: “Oh, that’s what God told me would happen: That He would be sanctified through those closest to Him.” I thought it would be either me or you, says Moshe, according to Rashi, that God would take one of us as a sacrifice at the dedication of the Mishkan. But no, it appears that actually your children are even greater and more desirable to God than we are. Many use Moshe’s statement to unpack the meaning of these deaths, but I think his words are concerned less with the event itself and more with his brother’s reaction to the event; Moshe’s words are an expression not of truth, but of brotherly concern.

Not all is smooth sailing between Moshe and Aaron, however, as we see in the next and final interaction of the day. Moshe, as the leader, is concerned that the dedication of the Mishkan continue smoothly despite this tragedy. When he finds out that Aaron and his sons have not eaten the sacrificial meat despite his instructions, he lashes out at them in anger. Aaron responds: “On such a day, when such things have happened to me, would it really be pleasing in God’s eyes if I partook of the sacrifices?” Aaron reminds Moshe of the human, emotional element. Moshe, though easily angered, is also extremely humble and quick to note that he is wrong. The verse says simply: “And Moshe heard and it was pleasing in his eyes (10:20).” The midrash elaborates, saying that Moshe sent out the following proclamation throughout the camp: “I made a mistake, and Aaron taught me the correct law.” Moshe publicly defers to Aaron, raising and supporting Aaron’s stature in the public eye.

Support, comfort, and an openness to criticism – these are the marks of the Moshe/Aaron relationship, of the Moshe/Aaron team. This is a new type of sibling relationship for the Torah, a far cry from that of Cain and Abel, Yaakov and Esav, or Yosef and his brothers. Those others did not merit the building of the Mishkan and the descent of God’s Presence to dwell on earth. Perhaps it was precisely this new type of sibling relationship that God was waiting for. When the Torah describes that special day long ago when God came to dwell on earth, what it describes is not just sacrifices, but also human relations, human relations of the most supportive, sensitive loving sort. It is this love, this kindness which brings God to dwell on earth, which defines His Presence here.

Shabbat Zachor and Purim: On Knowledge and Humility

2011-03-16T00:41:00.000-07:00

The juxtaposition between Shabbat Zachor and Purim strikes me as strange. At first glance, the connection is clear: Parashat Zachor (the extra Torah reading on the Shabbat before Purim) deals with the command to remember and to completely annihilate the nation of Amalek, and on Purim, we celebrate our victory over the evil Haman the Aggagite, descendant of the Amalekites.

But upon reflection, it seems that Zachor and Purim don’t really fit together. Zachor is a serious matter; it bids us to have moral clarity concerning the evil in the world and to take an extremist position of zero-tolerance – complete annihilation – of such evil. Purim, on the other hand, is a light carnival holiday, full of laughter and irony. On Purim we are not exactly sure who we are and what is right or wrong; we put on costumes, pretending to be both evil and good characters and we are told to drink ad delo yada, “until one does not know” the difference between the cursed Haman and the blessed Mordecai.

Perhaps the light nature of Purim provides an essential counter-balance to the seriousness of Zachor. Yes, you are called as a Jew to take seriously your task to eradicate evil and pursue good in the world, but don’t be overzealous about it. Take the time to laugh at yourself and your convictions. Even in the very midst of our assertions of clarity concerning good and evil we pause to say that, in some ways, we humans are really all drunkards, our perception imperfect, unable to perfectly distinguish between those who should be cursed and those who should be blessed.

This dichotomy between moral clarity and an appreciation of our limited ability to discern good and evil is epitomized in the Megillah by two characters, Mordecai and Achashverosh. Mordecai stands for moral clarity and certainty. Indeed, the word yada, to know, is used multiple times with reference to him. He knows of Bigtan and Teresh’s treachery; how he knows we never find out, but he knows; he is a knower. And he knows of Haman’s plans; chapter 4 begins U’Mordecai yada et kol asher na’asah. “And Mordecai knew all that had been done.” Mordecai approaches Esther with this moral clarity and tells her what needs to be done. He knows, without any question, what is right and what is wrong.

Achashverosh, on the other hand, seems to have neither knowledge nor convictions. He is often portrayed as a simpleton for precisely this reason; he is equally open to the evil Haman and to the righteous Mordecai, offering them each in turn the use of his signet ring. He does not judge; he does not make distinctions. He is like a drunkard, like the drunkard that we are meant to be at the Purim feast. He muddles through life, waking up anxious at night with a sense that there is something he should be doing, but he is not quite sure what it is.

To be like Achashverosh most of the year would be wrong. We are meant, like Mordecai, to take seriously our task to know things in the world, to remember what is right and what is evil and to act on such convictions. But such moral certainty is also dangerous in a human; it is a kind of hubris. On Purim, on the cusp of making a statement of great moral certainty in Parashat Zachor, we are reminded not take ourselves too seriously, to temper our convictions with humility, a sense of the limits of the human capability to really know.

Parashat Vayikra

2011-03-09T11:22:00.000-08:00

We have reached the book of Leviticus, the third and middle book—the heart— of the Torah. The Tabernacle has been constructed, and now God informs the people how to go about bringing sacrifices, korbanot, within this Tabernacle.

The offerings acceptable to God come in many forms, the Torah assures us. There is not one single type of prescribed korban, but many -- the olah, the minhah,and the shelamim, and there is not one single appropriate ingredient to be brought, but many – cattle, sheep, birds and grain.

Different people bring different gifts with them to the Tabernacle, to the Torah, to Judaism, to the world. God wants them all, and they are all a means of coming close to Him. With one exception. The rabbis emphasize that a gift brought from stolen goods is not acceptable. Rashi, following the midrash, learns this lesson from the word Adam, which literally means “any person,” but which also has the resonance of the First Adam of the world. Just as Adam #1 did not bring a stolen offering to God since everything in the world belonged to him, so too, should we not bring a stolen item as a korban.

So goes the rabbinic logic. Strange, though. Why learn this lesson from the first Adam? What is the midrash really teaching us about the nature of korbanot? When you want to give a gift to God – to make some offering or contribution to the Tabernacle or to the world -- be like the First Adam. Think of yourself as the only one in the world. Feel as if the whole world depends on your particular contribution. If you don’t bring it, no one else will.

Because that is the truth. If you don’t bring yourself – if instead you somehow bring someone else’s offering, try to play someone else’s part, to copy their way of being in the world – then no one else will bring what you have to offer. The world will simply be lacking your special contribution. Maybe you think that doesn’t matter. But no, the midrash says. Imagine that you are the First Adam, alone in the world, and you will know how much your offering matters.

When a student cheats on an exam, copying someone else’s thoughts, what is most sad is not the damage to the one whose work has been copied, but the damage to the cheater himself, the sense he has of himself as someone who has nothing to contribute, nothing of his own to bring as an offering.

The first line of the sacrificial instructions reads: Adam ki yakriv mikem, literally, “A person, when he brings forward an offering from among you.” The word mikem, “from among you,” is strangely placed after the verb “to bring forward” instead of after the noun “a person.” The classic Hasidic reading of this verse sees the word mikem as referring to the type of offering to be brought – bring something mikem, “from you,” from yourselves, from your very essence. Bring your own special type of offering – whether it be bird or song or dance or word – bring it forward to God’s House and to the world to share. Because if you don’t, no one else will.

Parashat Pekudei-Shekalim: How To Be A "Nasi"

2011-03-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

The nesi’im, the chieftains, considered themselves above the people. According to the midrash, they heard the call for material donations for the construction of the Tabernacle, and thought they would wait until the ordinary people had stopped giving and then step in, with great fanfare, to complete the missing materials. As it turned out, the people gave an overwhelming amount, more than could even be used, so that the nesi’im were left with almost no role to play. They ended up making the small, last minute contribution of the breastplate stones. It is for this reason, says the midrash, that the word nesi’im is missing a letter in this section of the Torah, spelled without its usual yod.

The nesi’im did not understand what makes a person great, what makes a person a true nasi, literally a person who is “lifted up” or “elevated.” In this case, the ordinary people of Israel were nesi’im; the Torah calls those who contributed to the Mishkan ish asher nesa’o libo, “one whose heart has lifted him up.” What elevated them was that they were not interested in individual glory but in participating, making their little contribution to the joint project of the Mishkan. The Torah says they came anashim al nashim, “men on top of women,” all in a jumble, not as individuals, but together, running to be part of the group.

The construction of the Mishkan involved many different skills – weaving, metal-work, carpentry and other fine craftsmanship, and as such it was a model of a communal project that requires each person to play his part. In the end, the Torah attributes the work not to Bezalel, the architect, or even to the craftsmen, but rather to the community as a whole – “Thus was completed all the work of the Tabernacle . . . The Israelites did so” (39:32).

So it is with the whole Torah. The Torah was not given to Avraham, or, as Nehama Leibowitz puts it, to Robinson out on an island. It was given to the entire nation, and only the entire nation can together fulfill it. There is no one individual who can do all the mitzvot; some are only for women, some only for priests or Levites or non-priests or Levites, or those who live in the land of Israel. Only together, as a nation, can the Torah be fulfilled.

This is what Moshe said to Pharaoh back in Egypt. Pharaoh said if you’re going to worship God for a few days, just take a few men. But no, Moshe said: We will go with our young and our old. We will all go. This is a religion that requires every one to play a part.

This week, in addition to reading about the end of the construction of the Mishkan, we also read the first of the 4 special readings before Passover, called Parashat Shekalim. It too delivers the same message of interdependence and community. In it we read about the counting of the people, which was done through the contribution of half-shekels each. Why a half-shekel and not a whole shekel? For counting purposes, it would have been simpler to have a 1:1 correspondence of shekels and people. But no. The message is that none of us stands on her own, a complete entity, able to make a complete contribution on our own. We are all halves, incomplete without another, only whole when we come together.

In describing this half-shekel count, the Torah uses the phrase ki tisa et rosh, which literally means “when you raise or elevate heads.” It is not by raising ourselves above others that we are truly elevated, as the nesi’im thought; on the contrary, elevation happens by making ourselves a part of each other, forming ourselves into corresponding halves that work together in the building of the Mishkan and the world.

Parashat Vayekhel: Looking Forward From Shabbat

2011-02-23T11:40:00.000-08:00

In last week’s parsha, the commandment to keep Shabbat began with an Akh, a “but.” Yes, build the Mishkan but stop building to keep my Sabbaths.

There Shabbat was a stopping point, a pulling of the brakes. Here, though, in this week’s parsha, Shabbat appears again, and here, Shabbat is not an end, but a beginning. Here the parsha begins with Shabbat. Here it appears before the Mishkan, before Moshe passes on the Mishkan instructions to the people. Here Shabbat is not so much a resting point from work as it is an energizer before the work actually begins.

That is the way Shabbat functions. It looks backward to the week that just passed, but it also looks forward to the coming week. Indeed, the Talmud says that the days up until Wednesday belong to the previous Shabbat, whereas from Wednesday on the days belong to the next Shabbat. Shabbat is both an end-point and a starting-point.

In the story of creation, God is said to bless the seventh day because on that day He rested mikol melakhto asher bara Elokim la’asot, literally, “from all the work that God had created to do.” A famous midrashic reading understands this strange locution to refer to the future work left for mankind to do. Even the first Shabbat’s rest led inexorably into the next week’s work, this time the work of humans.

The Esh Kodesh, the Rebbe of the Warsaw ghetto, writes that the kedushah, the holiness, of Shabbat spreads outward to all the days around it, before and after. Usually, we speak of the contrast between Shabbat and the 6 work-days, but instead he suggests thinking of the connections between them, of how Shabbat’s overwhelming holiness can spill over into the week.

What is it that spills over? The experience of Shabbat teaches not just how to rest but also how to work. The Israelites, on the cusp of their first big work project in the world, needed to experience Shabbat before they could begin work. What did they learn? First, Shabbat teaches about God, that He, not we, created the world. This lesson is first learned through resting on Shabbat, but it is ultimately translated – during the week -- into work that is leshem shamayim, “for the sake of heaven.” The building of God’s house, the Mishkan, stands as a classic example of such work.

Second, the lesson of Shabbat is community. It is no accident that our parsha begins Vayakhel Moshe et kol adat Benei Yisrael, “And Moshe gathered the whole congregation of Israel together into a kehillah, a community.” He gathered them together in order to instruct them first concerning Shabbat and then concerning the Mishkan. Shabbat creates community. People stop their individual busy lives and come together to pray, to eat, to sing, to hang out at the park.

The Israelites needed this message in order to build the Mishkan together. Indeed, the verses which follow emphasize the widespread participation of the people in this project. Again and again the Torah tells us that “all the people” came, using the word kol, “all,” no less than 8 times here to refer to the people. They came ha’anashim al hanashim, literally “men on top of women,” meaning everyone, all running in a jumble to participate. The lesson of Shabbat was well-learned; the building of the Mishkan would be a truly communal project.

Where do our Shabbatot lead us? They led the Israelites to the creation of a space for God to dwell on earth, among them, as a community. Shabbat is not just an end but a beginning. Rashi says that Moshe came down from Mount Sinai and delivered this message right after Yom Kippur. The building of the Mishkan, suggests the Sefat Emet, was like our building of Sukkot right after Yom Kippur. We take the energy of Yom Kippur and channel it into a building project. Every Shabbat needs to be, for us, like a little Yom Kippur, an experience that energizes us to carry Shabbat’s messages into our weekday lives and work.

Parashat Ki Tisa: On Containment and Creativity

2011-02-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

Akh et Shabtotai Tishmoru . But you should still keep my Sabbaths, says God in this week’s parsha. What is this Akh, this “But?” The classical interpretation explains that the Akh refers back to the work of building the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. Yes, this work is important – so important that we have just spent two parshiyyot defining it and will spend two more performing it – but do not do this work on Shabbat.

The various types of work – 39 types in all—involved in building the Miskhan actually define the type of work prohibited on the Sabbath, called melakhah. What is melakhah? Melakhah is creative human manipulation of the raw materials created by God. You take gold and you mold it into a menorah. You take wool and you weave it into priestly garments.

But dangers lurk in this human creativity. The extreme form of such dangers is spelled out in the story of the Israelites’ first idolatry, the Sin of the Golden Calf, also in this week’s parsha. To worship an idol means to worship the product of one’s own hands, to worship one’s own creative powers. My youngest son Asher said to me the other day: God made us people, and then we made cows and sheep and everything, right? No. That is the mistake the Israelites made. No matter how fancy the craftsmanship, that calf can never breathe. There are limits to our creative abilities. Shabbat, with its big Akh, its big “but,” is there to point out those limitations.

Shabbat’s position in these parshiyyot communicates this Akh message as well. The Shabbat commandment appears here, between the Mishkan and the Calf, and then again in next week’s parsha, after the Calf and before the resumption of the Mishkan narrative. The order is: Mishkan, Shabbat, Calf, Shabbat, Mishkan. It is as if Shabbat stands guard on either side of the Calf, marking the border beyond which human creativity turns into idolatry.

But the Torah’s attitude toward human creativity should not be summed up by the word Akh. On the other side of that Akh is the divinely sanctioned human production of the Mishkan. The need for such human participation in God’s created universe is the other important message of the Calf story. This sin was a communication of the basic human need to participate creatively in this world, an expression of our great energy and talent. We could not sit idly awaiting the reception of God’s Torah, but needed to actively create something, to express ourselves religiously. Yes, this creative energy needs harnessing, but it also needs expression. The Calf story sits at the heart of all these parshiyyot because it represents the unbridled heart of humanity, its essential need to participate actively and creatively in God’s world.

Like a wild energetic child, what the Israelites needed was both containment – the Sabbath -- as well as an appropriate forum for expression -- the construction of the Mishkan – a way of chanelling their energies and talents into the service of God.

Parashat Tetzaveh: On Light

2011-02-08T11:06:00.000-08:00

This week’s parsha, which continues the instructions concerning the building of the Tabernacle, begins with the Ner Tamid, the “eternal light" of the menorah.

The Ner Tamid has always been the focus of great attention and interpretation. Its position in the Torah is already marked, as it stands in the center of two parshiyyot, both of which deal with instructions concerning the building of the Tabernacle. Moreover, its placement in the narrative is curious. As an instruction concerning the ingredient to be used for the lighting – clear beaten olive oil – it should have been included earlier, with the description of materials. And as an instruction concerning the process of lighting, it should have come later, together with other instructions concerning the priests’ daily jobs, in Leviticus. Standing here, at the center of the Tabernacle instructions and at the start of a new parsha, it is begging to be interpreted. As the Rabbis often say: this verse says darsheni –Interpret me!

And so it has received layer upon layer of interpretation over the centuries: The Ner Tamid is a symbol of God’s Eternal Presence in the Tabernacle. It is the divine light that was originally created on the first day of creation but then hidden away for the messianic age. It is the light of Torah that guides us through the dark world, helping us, like a little lamp, to see the potholes and stones in our way so that we do not trip and fall.

On the other hand, there are those who see this light, not as God’s light, but as our own. It is the light of the mitzvoth —good deeds – that we do. It is the shining of our little divine lights, our souls. This olive oil that was used in the Tabernacle -- it came from us. We are, according to one verse, compared to olives. And, expounds the Slonimer Rebbe, we, like olives, have a power to illuminate, a power which is hidden deep inside us. Other fruits, even if you squeeze them and process them, they still remain essentially a food (or drink). But the olive is exceptional. If you pound and beat and grind it, what emerges is a magical, creative power, the power to produce light.

Which one is it? Is the light God’s or ours? Both. God created the lights above, but also gave us the tools to make light down below. The midrash notices that the verse says leha’aolot Ner Tamid, literally, “to make the Ner Tamid go up.” The priest must light the flame until it is capable of going up on its own. The process is one of empowerment, for God and us as well. God, like a good teacher, kindles our flames in a way that helps us to produce light on our own.

Surprisingly, the help does not go in only one direction. According to another midrash, God says: Neri beyadekhat venerekha beyadi. My light is in your hands and your light is in My hands. God has entrusted His light, the Torah, into our hands, and we have entrusted our light, our souls, into His. We are partners, enmeshed and intertwined, dependent and deeply connected to one another. Together we keep the light eternally aflame.

Parashat Terumah: God's Mobile Home

2011-02-02T11:11:00.000-08:00

My youngest son Asher, upon being asked what materials he thought would be necessary for the building of the Tabernacle described in this week’s parsha, replied: “Cement.”

It’s true. One would have expected the building of a house of God to require cement, something to hold the pieces together in a permanent way. But no, it turns out that the building of this temple was to be more like building a Lego structure, something that could be easily disassembled and reassembled. This was to be a mobile house of God and its entire structure was determined by this fact, its walls built with detachable nuts and bolts and its major appurtenances constructed with attached poles for carrying. Concerning the Aron, the ark which housed the Torah tablets, the Torah says specifically, as if to emphasize how essential mobility is to its very nature: “The poles shall remain in the rings of the Ark: they shall not be removed from it” (25:15).

Eventually, of course, many years later, in the time of King Solomon, the Israelites did build a permanent Temple, based upon the model of this Tabernacle. Why, then, does the Torah bother to describe this mobile one? Why not merely wait till the Israelites get to the land, and deal with (permanent) Temple building then? Why is the whole prototype of a house of God given here as a mobile one?

Perhaps because giving God a house on earth is a complicated and dangerous thing. On the one hand, people want to feel that one specific place is holy; we want and need a place to come to worship and feel close to God. On the other hand, God is everywhere. He cannot be contained in any one space. Cassuto suggests that part of the purpose of the Tabernacle was to help the Israelites cope with their separation from the holy place of Mount Sinai. Here was a place in which they had experienced incredible intimacy with God. If they left this place, what would happen to their connection to God? The Tabernacle was to sit in the midst of the camp, like Mount Sinai, as a symbol of God’s continuing presence among them.

The Israelites knew from cement. Not long ago, they had been slaves working with “mortar and bricks” for Pharaoh’s great building projects. What God was offering them here was an alternative type of building project, one which, like the outstretched wings of the cherubs atop the Ark, was meant to have a kind of lightness and mobility, to be untied to any specific place.

Untied to place, and also, untied to time. Concerning both the bread and the light of the Tabernacle, the Torah uses the word tamid, “always.” The connection to God established at Mount Sinai was meant to be something that can be carried on wherever and whenever one exists. Ironically, by creating a structure that was, unlike Egypt’s mortar and bricks, impermanent, something truly permanent and eternal was established.

Permanent? Eternal? But here we are, in 2011, without a Temple. Maybe the message of this mobile Temple, the message of this Tabernacle, this Mishkan, is that one is never really without a Mishkan, never really without God’s presence. The rabbis say that if one studies the Torah portions concerning the Tabernacle, God considers it as if one has actually brought sacrifices. No, we have no actual building structure, but we do still read the words describing that structure – they are eternal. It is through them and through all the words of the Torah that we do have a kind of Mishkan, a portable entryway to connecting to God.

Parashat Mishpatim: On the Unloading of Burdens

2011-01-26T10:51:00.001-08:00

“When you see the ass of your enemy lying under its burden and you think to refrain from raising it for him, you must nevertheless raise it with him!” (Ex 23:5).

This is one of the many laws – dealing with subjects as far-ranging as slavery, the Sabbath and judicial procedure-- in this week’s parsha, fittingly called Mishpatim,”Laws.” This particular law describes a situation in which one comes upon one’s enemy and sees that his beast of burden has collapsed under the weight of its heavy load. The Torah spells out a natural response – not to help one’s hated enemy – and then insists that one nevertheless lend a hand.

The word used here for the “raising” of the burden is azov, which also means “to leave behind.” “Leave behind what is in your heart concerning him,” says Targum Onkelos, an ancient translation of the Torah into Aramaic. “Leave behind at that moment the hatred in your heart concerning him and take apart the burden and carry it with him,” says Targum Yonatan, another classical translation.

The ass, then, is not the only one who needs his burden unloaded! This commandment is also intended to help you relieve or “leave behind” your own burden, the burden of your hatred of another human being. If you have an enemy, then you, like that donkey, are falling down under a heavy burden. Stop and help relieve your fellow ass’s burden, and you will find that your own burden has also been relieved.

In the children’s book Zen Shorts, a panda bear tells a story about two monks who were travelling together. When the older monk stops to help carry an arrogant demanding rich woman across a puddle and receives no thanks for this task, the younger monk becomes angry and remains so for hours. When he finally expresses his anger, the older monk says: “I put that woman down hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?” The question is not whether one is right to feel anger or hatred at another human being, but rather what effect it has on the one who feels the anger or enmity, how such emotions weigh us down.

The point of this Torah law – like many others -- is not only to provide aid for those in need, in this case the animal and its owner, but also to train the person doing the aid, to teach him to act righteously -- despite his hatred-- and thereby to find some relief from that hatred. After all, the Torah could have stated the law more simply: Help your fellow when his animal is collapsing under his burden. The mention of hatred indicates that what is important here to the Torah is not just the net result of aid given but also the state of mind of the giver.

Perhaps it is for this reason that the Torah bothers to tell us the initial thoughts of the one who sees this animal. He first thinks he will refrain me’azov lo, “from raising it for him.” His first thought is that the action will be solely for the benefit of his enemy. No, says the Torah. Azov ta’azov imo. Imo, “With him,” not “for him.” With him. Together. You will both be benefiting, you as well as he.

The Hasidic Rebbe of Piaseczno is said to have told his young students every Shabbat eve, between every single course, the same exact message – “The most important thing in the world is to do something good for another person.” And when you do, do not think that the only person who is gaining from this do-gooding is the other. It is you. Azov ta’azov imo. Together. When you help another, it changes you, too, lifting both your burdens at the same time.

Parashat Yitro: Standing Alone Together

2011-01-18T01:53:00.000-08:00

Vayihan sham Yisrael neged hahar. “Israel encamped there opposite the mountain,” opposite Mount Sinai in preparation for receiving the 10 commandments in this week’s parsha. The Hebrew verb Vayihan is in the singular here, causing the rabbis to say that, unlike other encampments, this one was done belev ehad, “with one heart,” as a single peaceful unified people.

As an American, raised in a culture where individuality is a core value, too much unity scares me. What happens to individuals in such a group setting? Do they lose the ability to express themselves differently from the group? Does “with one heart” imply a lack of individuality?

The ten commandments are also given in the singular, beginning with Anokhi Hashem Elokekha, “I am the Lord your” –the word “your” is in the singular –“God.” Here the midrash takes a different approach, saying that God spoke to each individual according to his or her individual ability and personality, appearing to each one as if He were looking and speaking to her alone. The Sefat Emet carries this midrash one step further, saying that during the Mount Sinai experience, each person was able to see his individual connection to God, to see the part of himself that was a piece of God.

These two traditions – seemingly contradictory, one with its emphasis on unity, the other with its emphasis on individuality – are actually complementary. Peaceful togetherness can only happen when each individual feels valued, when each individual feels he has a special place with God, and therefore also a special place in the community. The 2 commandments which stand at either end of the 10 commandments, forming a kind of envelope around the whole, convey precisely this message. “I am the Lord your – individual – God.” And “Do not covet” the possessions of your neighbor. Do not desire to be someone else. Know that you, as an individual, were created in the image of God and have your own special place in God’s universe. Be, therefore, not jealous of your neighbor, but at peace with yourself and with others.

Directing oneself toward God helps this effort. In the eyes of man, all kinds of hierarchy exist, and society tends to value some individuals more than others. But in the eyes of God, all hold a piece of God within them. All have a place. The people encamped belev ehad – with one heart – neged hahar -- opposite the mountain. It was standing opposite this mountain of God that helped them each feel valued and therefore at peace with each other.

Perhaps the feeling at Mount Sinai was not unlike the feeling of praying the silent Amidah together with a minyan (a prayer quorum). Each person speaks quietly and personally to God, but the whole group does so in the same room at the same time, with the knowledge that all are directing their hearts in the same direction. We stand before God--as individuals--“with one heart.”

Parashat Beshallah: The Beginning of the Journey

2011-01-11T10:32:00.000-08:00

The children of Israel, on the eve of their departure from Egypt in last week’s parsha, paint their doorposts and lintels with the blood of the paschal lamb. The Sefat Emet suggests that the image of the doorway is significant. They are on the cusp of a new life. God has created a doorway into the Torah for them.

It turns out the door does not simply open into a place of residence, but leads instead to a long twisting pathway, a road to be travelled. The path created by the parting of the two walls of the Red Sea symbolizes this road, and God’s choice of the “long way around” the desert mentioned in the first verse of this week’s parsha makes it clear that the road will be a long one.

This sense of journey is an important counter-point to the exhilaration of the exodus of last week’s parsha. Even after 10 plagues, the job is not done. One’s enemies, and in the classic Hasidic interpretation, one’s spiritual challenges, will continually follow one around. Steps forward are made. The Israelites see the Egyptians lying dead on the banks of the sea, believe in God, and, overcome by clarity and gratitude, sing the great Song of the Sea. But what next? Even this great moment – during which the midrash says that a maid-servant saw God with greater clarity than the greatest of prophets – does not last. Changes, spiritual changes, must happen slowly and gradually. Immediately after the parting of the Red Sea, the people complain of thirst.

Thirst is their next challenge. Facing the Red Sea, there was too much water; what they needed then was dry land. Now they are on the other side of the Sea, facing the next spiritual challenge, a problem of the other extreme, a lack of water. Later in the parsha, they will confront problems of hunger , a return of thirst, and another enemy attack, Amalek.

The problems and challenges of the long road through the desert continue throughout most of the rest of the Torah. Such is life. Such is a Torah life. It is not without moments of exhilaration and clarity, moments of standing in one place and singing out one’s praise to God. But it is mostly a journey. Like the waters of the Sea, the image of life here is not stagnant, but continuously moving, moving and growing, always with an eye to the Promised Land, but never actually getting there.

The ability to travel this journey is a privilege and a blessing. Slaves cannot travel, cannot move forward or upward, always chained to their place in society. The exodus was a door not to the land itself – with all its implications of settling down-- but to a road, an opening and an opportunity to travel this challenging yet rewarding journey.

Parashat Vayehi: On Protection and Connection

2010-12-15T17:35:00.000-08:00

On his death-bed, Yaakov gives the following blessing to his grandchildren, Menasheh and Efraim:

The God before whom my fathers Avraham and Yitzhak walked,
The God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day,
The Angel who has redeemed me from all harm
-----Bless the lads [Hebrew, ne’arim].
In them may my name be recalled,
And the names of my fathers Avraham and Yitzhak,
And may they grow into teeming multitudes upon the earth (Genesis 48:15-16).

Yaakov offers two blessings here: protection and connection -- the blessing of protection from God above and the blessing of connection to those who came before (Avraham and Yitzhak ) and to those who will come after (the teeming multitudes). May these children feel protected from all harm by God’s watching Angel. And may they feel that they are a link to the past and the future, standing between their ancestors and the growing future nation.

These two blessings are not separate here, but deeply intertwined. The protection comes from the God before whom our ancestors walked. It is through our connection to them that we learn to rely on God and to feel protected.

The form of the blessing expresses this message as well. The names Avraham and Yitzhak appear at the beginning of the blessing and at its end, and right in the middle— enclosed in the protective shell of their ancestors and their ancestors’ God - are the ne’arim, the children. It is their connection to the past and to the Angel who saved their parents that will serve as a comforting enveloping presence as they make their way and become multitudes upon this earth.

Yaakov knows from trouble in his life. When he looks into his descendants’ future, surely he sees that they, too, will face great trouble, years of slavery and oppression. He cannot undo this future. All he can do is offer them a sense of protection, a sense of being enclosed and watched over, like a shepherd watches his flock. And this sense of protection, he tells them, comes from above, from God, and also from behind and in front, from the ancestors who believed in God, and from the future generations who will carry on the tradition.

In the words of the midrash (made famous by a Mordecai ben David song), we are ma’aminim benei ma’minim, believers, the children of believers.

Parashat Vayigash: On Hiddenness and Revelation

2010-12-08T18:23:00.000-08:00

Yosef reveals his identity to his brothers in this week’s parsha after a long period of hiding behind the mask of an Egyptian viceroy.

Hiddenness and revelation -- these concepts usually refer to God. Indeed, mystical interpreters like the Sefat Emet see this narrative as a parable for the soul’s search for the hidden aspects of God in the world.

There is support for such a reading in the narrative itself. Yosef is the first of our ancestors not to have direct communication from God, to live in a world – like ours – where God’s purpose is hidden. Yosef’s recourse is interpretation; he learns to see, or rather, to read, God’s purpose in dreams and life events. When he reveals his identity to his brothers, he also reveals something about God -- his interpretation of God’s role in his life, of God’s purpose in sending him down to Egypt to provide food for the family and for others. In a world where God is as hidden as Yosef is himself, divine revelation comes via interpretation.

Revelation is achieved by other means as well. Yehuda, too, plays a role in the process of unveiling Yosef’s identity. Through the speech which begins this parsha, he in effect forces Yosef to reveal himself. A midrash in Breishit Rabbah brings the following parable to illustrate Yehuda’s actions: It is like a deep well of fresh, cool water that no one can drink from because of its depth. Along comes a wise person and ties cord to cord, and thread to thread, until he is able to reach the fresh water at the bottom and draw it back up for all to drink.

Yehuda’s lengthy speech ties word to word and sentence to sentence to dig down deeper and deeper, reaching for the secret that he must have sensed lay hidden inside of this strange Egyptian viceroy. The midrash is an apt illustration of Yehuda’s task in relation to his brother Yosef – to uncover the depths of his hiddenness and to pull him back out of the pit they threw him into. But the midrash – with its use of the evocative figure of well water -- also seems to be reaching farther, to be implying a spiritual quest, an attempt to draw out of the depths of the world and all its hiddenness the cool fresh waters of spiritual sustenance, of divine revelation.

The midrash may also be referring to its own hard-won insights into the depths of the Torah. For the rabbis, the Torah is a deep well of secrets to be mined by those who – like themselves -- know how to tie cord to cord (and verse to verse) and keep digging until the fresh cool waters of the Torah’s secrets are forced to reveal themselves.

Revelation can be achieved by many means – by interpretation, by perseverance, and perhaps also through the kind of honesty, bravery and selflessness displayed by Yehuda in his speech. The key is to believe that there is something hidden to reveal in the first place, to have a sense of mystery about the universe, to be willing to dig deeply in the world and in the Torah in the hopes of reaching those fresh cool waters of revelation and inspiration.

Chanuka and Parashat Miketz: On Miracles

2010-11-30T18:02:00.000-08:00

Do you believe in miracles?

Chanuka begs the question. Al Hanisim ve’al hapurkan, we say and sing. “For the miracles and for the salvation,“ we thank you, God.

What is the miracle of Chanuka? Usually we say there are two. The military miracle, that a small band of Maccabees was able to defeat the mighty Syrian-Greek army. And the miracle of lights, that a single jug of oil lasted for eight days instead of one. But maybe these two miracles are –like the two dreams of Pharaoh that Josephs says are really one in this week’s parsha – actually two manifestations of the same phenomenon. Both miracles express the strength of something small, a single can of oil and a tiny nation. Chanuka is about the triumph of the small, the survival of the nation of Israel, which, like a little flame set against the backdrop of a long winter night sky, should, by all rights, have flickered and died long ago.

Chanuka teaches us to believe in miracles, strengthens our faith in the indomitable divine spark in our midst. Chanuka is by necessity a winter solstice holiday; coming at our darkest time in the year, it reminds us to believe in light even in the midst of darkness. In Pharaoh’s dream from this week’s parsha, the skinny cows and skinny stalks of wheat swallow up the fat ones. That is the natural way of the world, the way of our worst fears, that trouble will outflank fortune, evil crumble good, darkness overwhelm light. But on Chanuka we are all -- like Yosef -- able to combat such nightmares. We stand, armed with our little lights, and push against the darkness, declaring our faith that light – no matter how faint -- will always triumph.

Is this realistic? Sometimes the evil side has the bigger army, the larger guns, the power of the state to torture and kill. On Chanuka we assert that miracles are realistic, that it is not numbers or power or might that prevail, but spirit, the spark of divine light, the flame inside us. The Maccabees and their little can of oil stand for all those who should have given up but didn’t, all those who fight might with courage and faith – the American revolutionaries, Gandhi and his followers, the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

On Chanuka we remember their heroism and are strengthened by it. The word Chanuka has the same root as the word for education, chinuch. Chanuka is a kind of education, an education of the soul. We begin with one candle – small and flickering – but over time, our faith grows, and each night we find ourselves capable of pushing back against that darkness a little bit more, until, on the final night, our houses are sparkling with light, and we, with courage and faith.

Unlike the miracles of Passover – the 10 plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea – the miracles of Chanuka happened through human agency. On Chanuka, we learn that we, too, are responsible for playing our part in making miracles happen. We thank God daily for turning darkness into light each morning, but He has also implanted in us the divine spark, a spark which is also capable of turning darkness into light, of lighting a candle in the midst of the darkest of nights.

Parashat Vayeshev: Yosef's Transformation

2010-11-24T08:50:00.000-08:00

Our ancestors did not start out great. They grew, over time, through struggle and ordeal, into greatness. In the past few parshiyyot, we saw Yaakov suffer and grow in his own way. Now it is Yosef’s turn. Yosef starts out haughty and vain, taunting his brothers with his favored status and dreams of grandeur; we will watch him learn -- through the experience of being brought low, again and again – to be humble.

There are three sets of 2 dreams in the Yosef narrative and each set marks a different stage in Yosef’s development. The story begins with his own dreams, in which the earth and the sky bow down to him and revolve about him. What hubris! What blasphemy! While his father Yaakov dreamed of a ladder reaching up to heaven with God nitzav -- standing -- at the top, Yosef’s dream contains no God. No god, that is, except himself, the only one whose sheaf is nitzavah – standing -- in contrast to the bowing sheaves of his brothers.

Yosef is literally lowered from his pedestal multiple times in this parsha -- thrown down into a pit by his brothers, hurad, “brought down,” to Egypt, in the south, and then thrown into jail, also called here a “pit,” a place of lowness.

It is in jail that we begin to see a change in Yosef. The second set of dreams in the Yosef story does not belong to Yosef, but to the butler and the baker, his jail-mates. Yosef has grown. He is no longer narcissistically self-involved – dreaming of a world that revolves around him -- but is able to hear the needs and stories of others.

He also here acknowledges for the first time that God has something to do with his abilities, telling his dreaming jail-mates, “But God surely has interpretations! Tell me [your dreams].” This is new, this invocation of God as His partner, a definite step forward. And yet, at the same time, the statement implies an equation of himself with God – Yosef doesn’t spell out why they should tell him the dreams if it is God who has interpretations, making it seem like he is an extension of God in some way, also a kind of hubris.

Two more years of jail cure him. The final change in Yosef can be seen in next week’s parsha, in Yosef’s reaction to the third set of dreams, Pharaoh’s. In one word he reveals a complete change of attitude: Biladay, “Not I,” he says, but “God will see to Pharaoh’s welfare.” Not I. What a long way Yosef has travelled from those first dreams of self-absorption!

Ironically, it is now – now that he can stand ego-less before Pharaoh, a humble servant of God – that he realizes his dreams of grandeur, becoming viceroy to the king. True greatness cannot be achieved without humility. One’s own dreams are only realized if one learns to listen to the dreams of others, becoming part of the world, not above it, a brother to others, not a god.

Yosef’s journey of self-transformation was a long, hard one. It inspires us with the possibility of transformation and also with the challenge to -- like Yosef -- turn life’s ordeals into opportunities for personal growth.

Parashat Vayishlach: On Separation

2010-11-17T07:15:00.000-08:00

The parsha begins with a reunification – the meeting between Esav and Yaakov after 20years of estrangement – but its theme is actually separation. After the two brothers hug and kiss and make up, Esav suggests that they continue their journey together. But Yaakov thinks otherwise. Using his children as an excuse, he says he’ll catch up to Esav in the land of Seir. He never does. Instead he goes to his own land, the land God had promised him.

Yaakov and his family are becoming a nation, a separate nation with its own identity. Yaakov’s descendants will no longer return to the family home in Padan Aram as he did. Last week’s parsha ends with a peace treaty between Yakov and Lavan -- the representative of that Aramean family -- as they agree to part ways amicably. And this peace treaty, a pile of stones, is significantly named by each in a different language -- Yegar Sahaduta in Aramaic and Gal Ed in Hebrew -- the different languages helping to demarcate the new boundary between the two families and nations.

This week’s parsha completes that separation from the Aramean family and its idol-worshipping legacy as Yaakov instructs his household to get rid of their idols, burying them under a tree. Nahum Sarna suggests that the death and burial (also under a tree!) of Devorah, Rivkah’s nursemaid (35:8) -- a detail which seemingly has no place in the narrative – is, like the purging of idols, a symbol of the final severing of contacts with Mesopotamia. Rachel’s untimely death, related to her theft of Lavan’s household idols and Yaakov’s hasty oath concerning the thief, carries a similar message about the need to end such attachments to the Mesopotamian family idolatry.

Amidst all this, the Dinah story appears with its own theme of separation. The story begins in the city of Shechem with Dinah going out to hang with benot ha’aretz, “the local girls.” She is trying to assimilate, become part of the gang. When she is raped by the local chieftain’s son, the chieftain and his son offer Yaakov and his family a chance at just such assimilation and integration into the local population. “We will marry your daughters and you will marry ours, and we will become am ehad, one nation.” For Yaakov and his sons such integration is an impossibility; they are appalled at the sexual immorality that took place – “an outrage had been committed in Israel” -- and are certainly not about to join such a society. Their use of circumcision -- they demand that all males in the city be circumcised and then attack them in their weakness -- is in this respect more than a ploy; circumcision is indeed a sign of the difference between them and their fellow Canaanites, and it is this distinction which Yaakov’s sons wish to uphold.

And so Yaakov and his family--on the verge of becoming a nation -- move away first from Esav/Edom, then from Mesopotomia and finally from the local Canaanites in their own land. Their destiny is to be “a nation that dwells apart.”

Apart, yes. But to what end, the Torah seems to ask? For, soon after this incident in Shechem – where the sons of Yaakov condemn the local populace for their sexual immorality – we hear that Reuven, Yaakov’s eldest son, sleeps with his step-mother Bilhah. And then, in next week’s parsha, we begin the painful saga of Yosef, with all the terrible deeds done to him by his brothers.

Living apart is not enough. More than separation is required to create a nation that adheres to high moral standards. The Torah and its laws are needed. Maybe this is what Moshe learned, much later, in Exodus, when he went out of the palace that second time. The first time he saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite, and understood that salvation from outsiders was needed, but the second time, Moshe saw an Israelite hitting an Israelite, and must have understood that salvation from ourselves is also required. The Torah is that salvation.

Parashat Vayetze: On Angels and Flies

2010-11-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

Running away from his angry brother Esav and heading toward Haran to find a wife, Yaakov stops and sleeps on a sacred spot and dreams a famous dream: Above his head, there is a ladder reaching from earth to heaven with angels climbing up and down and God standing above.

Among the many interpretations of this dream, there is a midrash that compares the dream to the following strange scenario: A baby is lying on a bed with flies swarming around him. Along comes his nursemaid, lies down on top of him and nurses him, causing the flies to run away (Breishit Rabbah 69.3).

In this midrash, the flies are the angels, the sleeping baby is Yaakov, and God is the nursemaid. Now angels are usually understood as images of protection and aid, and so Rashi understands them here, but not so this midrash. For this midrash, they represent busy chaotic movement, like the buzzing of flies, a disturbance to one’s calm sleep. The midrash is picking up on the up and down movement of the angels and their multiple number. If they were merely portending good tidings, they would move solely upward. But no, they represent in their movement the ups and downs of life, its complications and travails. And, being more than one – the midrash says there must have been at least 4, 2 going up and 2 going down – their movement must have created a feeling of wild, swarming chaos, like the feeling one has in a room full of toddlers.

Indeed. Yaakov is, after all, headed, in this very parsha, to a life with 4 wives and 13 children. Not a life of peace and tranquility. Moreover, his is a life marked by great ups and downs, joys and difficulties. He is by all accounts successful, gaining his father’s blessing, marrying and having many offspring and becoming a wealthy man. These are the ups. Yet even amidst these pleasures, he is continually plagued by trouble -- conflict first with Esav and then with Lavan, the early loss of his most beloved wife as well as the loss of his favorite son for most of his life, his eldest son’s sexual misconduct, a daughter’s rape and the consequent extremely violent behavior of two other sons. It is no wonder that Yaakov, at the end of his life, tells Pharaoh that his life has been short and hard.

So, in the dream, Yaakov sees these angels –representing all the many life events that will bring him up and down the ladder -- he sees them all buzzing about, but he also sees something else, and here’s what the midrash is driving at. He sees God standing still at the top. Vehineh Hashem nitzav alav. Behold God was standing above, like the nursemaid driving away the swarming flies. The midrash highlights the way this verse creates a contrast to what comes prior. Vehineh, “Behold” the difference; the angels were moving up and down, moving, moving, moving, while God is simply nitzav, standing still. Maimonides says that this word, nitzav, when used in reference to God, means to be stable and permanent, constant (The Guide I:15). This is what Yaakov needs in his crazy chaotic life, a ladder held steady by a God who stands calmly and everlastingly at the top, making sure the bottom of the ladder also feels firmly planted in the ground, mutzav artzah. Life’s flies – the disturbing but necessary ups and downs of daily existence—do not exactly disappear with God standing above, but they no longer bother the sleeping baby, they no longer have the same disruptive power over Yaakov. After the dream, Yaakov builds a matzevah, which, like God and the ladder, is a stable standing structure, a permanent monument. It is an expression of what Yaakov has gained from this vision, a sense of stability amidst travail, a sense of peace amidst the flies.

Yaakov, more so than perhaps any of the other patriarchs, lives a life that looks familiar to us, an imperfect life filled with complications and troubles. God does not interfere much in his world; rather, He stands above, keeping the ladder steady, providing a well-spring of calm amidst a whirl of stress and chaos.

Further Thoughts: Some Other Interpretations of the Dream:

1) Rashi -- The movement of the angels up and down the ladder represents the changing of the guard. Yaakov is leaving the land of Israel so he needs different angels to accompany him outside the land. The old ones are leaving and the new, exilic ones arriving from above. This also explains the order of movement, first up, then down. At the end of the parsha, Yaakov meets up with angels once again, and here, too, Rashi explains them as the returning land of Israel angels coming to take their place as Yaakov begins his journey home. The angels thus surround the parsha, very much as they are meant, according to Rashi, to surround Yaakov wherever he goes.

2) Ibn Ezra and Radak similarly see the angels as forces of protection. They understand the ladder as intended to convey to Yaakov a sense that God controls all the events that take place on earth, that there is continual communication and control going back and forth between earth and heaven.

3) A different midrash (also Breishit Rabbah, 68.12) sees the ladder as a symbol of the Temple altar. The angels are the priests that go up and down the ramp to the altar, which is intended as a way to communicate with God, standing above. This interpretation is buttressed by the sense that Yaakov has reached "the place," a sacred place, the same place where the binding of Yitzhak occurred and the same place the Temple would be built.

4)Still another midrash (also Breishit Rabbah, 68.12) associates the sulam, the "ladder," with Sinai, pointing out that the two have the same gematria, the same numerical count of letters. According to this reading, the angels are Moshe and Aharon, going up and down the mountain, bringing down the Law for the people, as God's Presence comes down to reside at the to of the mountain. Both of these last two interpretations emphasize the sense of the ladder as a means of connecting heaven and earth, people and God, a way of facilitating communication between these two realms.

Parashat Toldot: Esav's Cries

2010-11-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

Vayitzak tze’akah gedolah umarah ad me’od. “He cried out an exceedingly great and bitter cry (Gen 27:34).” This is the Torah’s description of Esav’s reaction to the news that his brother Yaakov had stolen his blessing.

We can rationalize Yaakov’s actions. He had in fact bartered for the first-born rights earlier in the parsha so the blessing was his for the taking. He had more foresight and was more polite and respectful than his brother. He is our ancestor, after all, and Esav is not.

But still, that cry of Esav’s -- tze’akah gedolah umarah -- screams out to us. Whatever else Yaakov did, he hurt Esav. Esav suffered because of Yaakov’s actions.

And such suffering, says the midrash, does not go unheeded by God. “Rabbi Hanina said: Whoever maintains that the Holy One blessed be He is lax in dispensing justice, may his bowels become lax. He [God] is merely long-suffering (Breishit Rabbah 67:4).” When, according to Rabbi Hanina, did God punish Yaakov for causing Esav to suffer? Hundreds of years later, during the time of Esther, when Mordecai hears of Haman’s plan to kill the Jews. There we are told that Mordecai cries the same cry as Esav -- Vayizak ze’akah gedolah umarah – “He cried out a great and bitter cry (Esther 4:1).”

When you cause someone pain, it has repercussions. “Hurt people hurt people.” Yaakov’s actions began a long-term cycle of hatred and suffering.

What is so remarkable about this midrash is that it paints God as being on the side of Esav. Esav is the father of the nation Edom which is traditionally understood to represent Rome, and therefore considered Israel’s arch-enemy. Here we have a story of God heeding the cry of Israel’s enemy, and indeed, punishing Israel for that enemy’s suffering. There is a famous saying that puts it this way: “More important than having God on your side is making sure that you are on God’s side.”

God is Israel’s God, but God is also the God of the world, and most particularly, the God of those who suffer. It is their cries that draw Him into the world. “Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground (Gen 4:10),” says God after Cain kills Abel, using that same verb tza’ak. And it is the tze’akah, the cry, of the mistreated in Sodom that draws God down to earth there too. Later, in Exodus, we are told that if we mistreat the poor, the widow or the orphan, they will surely cry out to God – tza’ok yitzak eli – and then God will come down to exact retribution (Exodus 22:22, 26).

God hears the cries of the mistreated, whatever nationality. Hagar, too, suffered at the hands of our ancestor Sarah, and there too God hears and responds. In fact, her son – also the father of an enemy of Israel – bears as his name the memory of God’s ability to hear such cries, Yishmael, meaning “God hears.”

Not all the deeds of our ancestors are meant to be emulated. The message here is not to act like Yaakov or Sarah, who cause the pain, but to act like God, who hears the cries of suffering. Perhaps that was the purpose of all the suffering the Israelites later endured in Egypt, to create a nation that -- because it was born out of suffering -- would always be attentive to the suffering of others.

Parashat Chaye Sarah: A Turn Toward Family

2010-10-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Last week’s parsha ends with the akedah, the binding of Isaac. This week’s parsha begins with the death of Sarah. There is a famous midrash that connects these two events, saying that Sarah died from the tza’ar -- the emotional distress -- of thinking her son was being killed.

No one was actually killed at the akedah, but the event was still a tragedy for Avraham and his family. Not only does he lose his wife, but in some ways, he loses his son Yitzhak as well. Before the event, on the way up the mountain, the text tells us twice, vayelchu shneyhem yachdav. “The two of them walked together.” After the akedah, though, after Yitzhak experienced his father raising a knife against him, we hear only of Avraham walking “together” with his servants. Intimacy with his son is no longer possible. The family is broken.

And yet, in a way, through this tragedy, Avraham learns something. The akedah forces him to take a certain natural tendency he had to an extreme and test it. Is it necessary, in order to have faith in God, in order to maintain complete focus in an intimate relationship with God, is it necessary to sacrifice one’s family? Are God and family mutually exclusive?

God answers this question with a resounding no -- Please do not sacrifice your child, your family for My sake.

And so, after the akedah, Avraham acts differently. The Torah says Vayavo Avraham lispod liSarah vilivkotah, “And Avraham came to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her.” After the akedah, Avraham came to take care of Sarah, to do for her the only act of hesed, loving-kindness, still remaining– to mourn for her and to bury her. As my father has pointed out, the mention of crying and mourning at someone’s death is very unusual in the Torah. Not only that, but the Torah here goes into great detail concerning the process of burial – with a long description of the acquisition of the burial plot. All of this emphasis serves to highlight a change in Avraham, an attempt on his part to fix the imbalance of the akedah, to put his efforts back into his family.

The Torah says here Vayavo Avraham, “Avraham came.” Where did he come from to bury her? Was he in another city? Perhaps. But perhaps the verb indicates not just a change in location, but a change in heart. Avraham came – from the akedah—whole-heartedly back to his family.

After the akedah, after Sarah’s death and burial, the Torah suddenly informs us that Avraham was “old.” Wasn’t he already old – 100 at the birth of Yitzhak? Yes. But now he feels it, realizes his time on this earth – his time with those other beloved people around him – is limited.

And so, after taking care of his wife’s burial, Avraham turns to another beloved member of his family, his son Yitzhak. Sarah needed to be buried, but Yitzhak needs to get married. The parsha deals first with Avraham’s preoccupation with the first familial task, and next with the second, as Avraham sends off his servant to find an appropriate wife for his son.

What about God? Where is God in all this shift of focus to Avraham’s family? Avraham and God have become partners in taking care of Avraham’s family. Yes, there is some loss of intimacy here. After the akedah, God never speaks to Avraham again directly, but only through angels. There are no more of the awesome fiery visions of the previous parshiyyot. On the other hand, there is a new, more sustainable model for divine-human partnership. Both of the tasks Avraham occupies himself with in this parsha – taking care of the dead and bringing people together in marriage – are tasks that the rabbis say God considers His own occupation. Indeed, after the burial of Sarah, the midrash says that God made Avraham look “old” – like God—because He had adopted God’s burial occupation. And, concerning marriage, there is a famous story about a Roman matron who questioned a certain rabbi about God. Okay, she said, God created the world in 6 days, but what has He been doing ever since? The rabbi’s response? Ever since creation, God has been occupied with the making of matches.

This is what Avraham finally understood, after the akedah. If we want to participate in God’s work, if we want to be God’s partners in this world, we do not need to sacrifice and abandon those around us, but on the contrary, we need to join God in caring for them and helping to bring them together.

Parashat Vayera: On Avraham's Laughter

2010-10-20T18:20:00.000-07:00

Avraham and Sarah’s son is given the name Yitzhak, from the root tzahak, meaning “to laugh,” because of their laughter upon hearing the prediction of his birth. They think: This is a surprise; we are too old to have children, and they laugh.

What is this laughter, and why is it memorialized in a patriarch’s name? This laughter is not a laughter of derision or disbelief, nor is it one of light-heartedness exactly. It is a laughter with deep sources, a laughter that epitomizes Avraham’s special approach to life.

It is the laughter of a man who was always open to surprises in life, to the sudden turns of fate over which humanity has no control. God promises Avraham a land and children. But life’s twists and turns seemingly thwart the fulfillment of these promises time and again. A famine forces Avraham to leave the land for Egypt. And Avraham sits childless for years. When he is finally granted a child born to his wife Sarah, he is asked to sacrifice him. Through all these trials – and the rabbis name 10 of them – Avraham is the picture of equanimity, never worrying or complaining. His attitude is epitomized by his response to Yitzhak on the way to the altar, Elokim yireh lo haseh le’olah, beni. “God will provide the sheep for the offering, my son (Gen 22:8).” Don’t worry. God is in charge. Life may seem to be going in the wrong direction, but God works in mysterious ways.

Avraham does not expect to know what the future will bring. Twice God gives him indefinite destinations and twice he follows, once at the start of the Avraham narrative, “Go forth . . . to the land that I will show you.” And once at its culmination, Go and sacrifice your beloved son Yitzhak “on one of the mountains that I will tell you.” Avraham does not need to know the future. He understands that we humans don’t control it anyway, and opens himself to whatever future God brings his way. This openness to life’s suprises is well captured by the opening scene of this week’s parsha, as Avraham is seen sitting petah ha’ohel, “in the opening to the tent,” open to whomever and whatever passes his way in this world.

This point of view, this way of living, is epitomized by laughter. Nahum Sarna points out that elsewhere in the Torah, God laughs at humans who think they can control their destiny (Pss. 2;4; 37:13; 59:9). Here, Avraham’s laughter expresses the same notion, from the human perspective. He laughs because he knows how little control he has and because he trusts in God’s ultimate plan, and this knowledge frees him from stress and worry.

It is hard to imagine having faith like Avraham. But to stand back and admire it is to see a way of life that is full of peace and joy. The New Yorker recently had an article about “Laughter Yoga,” the disciplined practice of intentional laughing. Adherents report that it is liberating, erasing all practical concerns and fears and leaving one with a sense of calm. Avraham was, in his own way, the first laughter yogi -- he achieved that same sense of calm and acceptance of life’s ups and downs by laughing the laugh of faith.

Some Loose Ends: Further Questions about Laughter
1) Avraham and Sarah each laugh, separately (17:17 and 18:12), upon hearing the prediction of Yitzhak’s birth. God admonishes Sarah for her laugh, but not Avraham for his. Rashi explains that these two laughs are of different sorts. (Rashi on 17:17). What textual support is there for making such a differentiation? Are there other ways to explain the discrepancy in God’s reaction?

2) The root tzhahak comes up on two other occasions in this parsha, both negative. One is with reference to Lot, Avraham’s nephew. When Lot warns his sons-in-law about the coming destruction of Sodom, he is in their eyes kemetzahek , “like one who jests” (19:14). In other words, they don’t believe him, making fun of his warning. The second time is with reference to Yishmael. Sarah sees him being metzahek (21:9) and decides that he and his mother must be banished. What was he doing? The JPS translates the word as “playing.” The context is Yitzhak’s weaning party; perhaps Yishmael was teasing or making fun of Yitzhak in some way. Rashi, citing verses from elsewhere in the Bible, says that metzahek can mean idolatry, sexual immorality or murder. How do all these uses of good and bad laughter fit together?

Parashat Lekh-Lekha: Making the Trip Your Own

2010-10-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

In the end of last week’s parsha we learned that Avram’s father, Terah, had already started the family out on a journey to the land of Canaan. They never actually made it there, but they did leave their homeland, Ur Casdim, and travel part of the way to Canaan, stopping in Haran and settling there (Gen 11:31). Now, in this week’s parsha, God tells Avram to do the same thing his father had intended on doing –leave his homeland and travel to the land of Canaan. Why? What is the Torah telling us here?

All of our parents have already started our journeys for us. They brought us into the world and set us on a road, usually the road they themselves had been travelling. What happens next is essential. In Avram’s case, God says: lekh lekha, literally “go to or for yourself.” Rashi says it means, “go for your own good.” I read it as “make the trip your own.” Yes, it is the same path your father intended to walk, but make it yours, take ownership of it.

God continues by saying that Avram should leave his land, his birth place and his father’s house. Ironically, he will be fulfilling God’s command to leave behind his past by continuing his father’s journey. Avram’s leave-taking is a break that is continuous, a continuity that is also a break with the past.

Here is what makes it a break, what makes it a brand new journey for Avram. Terah went of his own accord, but Avram does so at God’s command. This is a journey originally conceived by man, but now sanctified by God’s command. As such, the journey, though physically the same, becomes entirely new and holy. The act is the same, but the intention, the kavanah, is different. Like a blessing before the performance of a mitzvah, God’s command transforms an ordinary action, the taking of a journey, into a special, holy one.

Avram makes the trip his own by making it also God’s trip, by making his travels a response to God’s command. The command begins with just Avram, lekh lekha, “Take this trip for yourself,” but it ends with both God and Avram -- el ha’aretz asher areka, “to the land that I will show you.” I and you, God and Avram, joined in that single word areka, which encompasses both the I and the you of “I will show you.” The Sefat Emet says this phrase means God will show you things you cannot see on your own. The trip’s destination becomes larger, grander, as a result of its sanctification by God.

The final destination for Avram’s physical journey is indeed the same as Terah had intended, the land of Canaan. But God does not speak of this physical destination. He speaks of “the land that I will show you,” of an open future. Terah’s journey ends before he reaches his final destination, stopping in Haran and dying there. But Avram’s journey never really ends. God tells him to keep walking, to traverse the land lengthwise and widthwise, and so Avram keeps travelling and God keeps showing him things, the sand and the sky, the future.

Avram’s journey is the task of every child. From the child’s perspective, every parent’s path is like Terah’s, just a physical road they have been asked to follow. Every child has the obligation and the opportunity to heed God’s call to Avram -- to make the trip her own, to give it meaning and sanctification, a sense of novelty and a future.

Parashat Noah: On the Tower of Bavel and the Danger of Unity

2010-10-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

In the tower of Bavel story, God mixes up the people’s languages “so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.” Shouldn’t we strive to understand one another? Why did God want to put distance between humans?

In the generation of the tower, there was apparently too much closeness, too much unity, too much homogeneity. The story begins by saying people had safah ahat, ”one language” and devarim ahadim, “few words or things.” Their problem was a lack of multiplicity; there were too few words and ideas in their society.

The sound of the text dramatizes this sense of sameness, as the modern scholar Cassuto points out. The people say to one another: Havah nilbinah leveinim and then havah nivneh lanu. It means, “Let us make brick,” and “let us build for ourselves,” but listen to the sound of it, havah nilbinah leveinim/havah nivneh lanu. This is a story about few words and it also has few words in it, the same words and sounds being repeated over and over. The words ehad, “one” safah, “language,” kol ha’aretz, “the whole earth” and shem, “name” or sham, “there,” are each repeated numerous times. The result is a story which sounds like the industrial assembly line it describes—the construction of a single tower, brick by brick, each the same as the last.

What is wrong with this model of human productivity? It is not creative. It is monotonous and immobile, building a single tower in one place. Pru urvu umilu et ha’aretz, says God repeatedly in these early stories -- be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Don’t have devarim ahadim, few ideas. Have many. Rejoice in the diversity of humanity. Shivim panim laTorah, say the rabbis – there are 70 different sides to the Torah, 70 ways of interpreting any one phrase, and our job as humans is to multiply meanings, to see all the colors of God’s post-flood rainbow, not to reduce them all to brick brown.

Maybe the problem was there were no individuals in Bavel. Before and after this story, we find long lists of genealogies with many an individual name but not in Bavel; the story itself has not a single personal name, and all action and speech is done in the plural. No wonder they had “few things.” The richness of many individuals had been reduced to group think. God made each individual in His image, which means, say the rabbis, that each one of us is slightly different. A society that does not prize and develop these differences to their fullest potential, a society that turns all its members into brick-layers, misses the essence of God’s rich world.

And so God comes down to the Tower builders and mixes up their languages, trying to get them to not understand each other, trying to get them to see that there are parts of other humans that are not the same as their own, that each person is a separate individual with his own language.

The midrash says that after God mixed up their languages, the people starting arguing. “I said to bring me a brick, not a hammer, you idiot!” The scenario sounds unpleasant, but may be exactly what they needed. Without conflict, ideas cannot blossom and grow. Jewish learning is traditionally suffused in argument, in the back and forth of Talmudic reasoning and all its rabbinic disagreements. Maybe what God was teaching the generation of the Tower was the value of conflict, the value of sometimes not agreeing, of creating a society of growth and variation, where there exist more than devarim ahadim, “a few things.”

Simchat Torah and the Circle of Continuity

2010-09-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

On Simchat Torah we read the last parsha of the Torah, Vezot Habrachah. The very last verse of that last parsha speaks of the great and mighty deeds Moshe did before the eyes of all of Israel. Rashi’s comment, his last on the Torah: This refers to Moshe’s breaking of the tablets in front of Israel at Sinai.

What a strange way for Rashi to end the Torah, with a reminder of the broken tablets of the Torah, with a reminder of the brokenness of Torah.

Rashi points us to the broken way in which the Torah itself ends. Moshe is left outside of the land of Israel, peering in to the Promised Land but not allowed to step foot in it. He dies and the people mourn him. Yehoshua takes over, the Torah tells us, and we know that Yehoshua does eventually take the people into the land of Israel, but we, the readers, like Moshe, are left outside, with a sense of incompleteness and fragmentation, a vague worry that, now that Moshe has died, the Torah’s brokenness will never be repaired.

Here is where our work begins. Moshe did not do the whole job. Vezot Habracha also includes the famous line, Torah Tzivah Lanu Moshe, Morashah Kehillat Ya’akov. “ Moshe commanded us the Torah, the inheritance of the congregation of Ya’akov.” There is a progression here; Moshe is the one who first brought the Torah down for us, but even after he dies, it continues to be an inheritance for the whole congregation, now belonging to all of us.

We continue his work. Moshe left the Torah incomplete, and it is our job to make it whole again, to keep it alive and regenerating in every generation.

And so, on Simchat Torah, we do not leave the Torah hanging, broken and discontinuous at Vezot Habrachah, but begin again with Breishit, making it clear that the Torah is not a linear book, but a circular one, whose ending and beginning roll smoothly into one another. And, in celebration of the circle which is our Torah, we dance hakafot -- circles around the Torah. These are circles of continuity and regeneration, a promise to ourselves that the Torah will never end.

We do not make those circles alone. One person cannot a circle make. After Moshe, the Torah is the possession of kehillat Ya’akov, the whole congregation, and can only be carried on and repaired through the joining of hands and minds.

Rashi says that God congratulated Moshe on the breaking of the tablets. Why? Normally we think of God’s approval for this action as confirming its appropriateness as a reaction to the people’s sin. Perhaps, though, God was congratulating Moshe for something else, for giving the people a fragmented, incomplete Torah because it required the people’s continued participation and interpretation. Here was a Torah that would require many minds and hearts, for generations to come, to make sense of, in the process creating circles of community and continuity. Perhaps, this, according to Rashi, was Moshe’s greatest act of all.

On Sukkot and Simplicity

2010-09-21T06:27:00.000-07:00

This year the sukkah speaks to me of simplicity. We think we need a lot of material things in order to live and survive. But on Sukkot we leave all those things behind and live in a simple hut, a building with a minimum of three walls and a leaky roof. Maybe we need less than we thought.

On Yom Kippur we learned a similar lesson, living for 25 hours without food and drink. It turns out we can survive with very little.

We spend our lives amassing material things. We are surrounded by them, our houses cluttered by them. Sometimes it feels as if our minds are cluttered by them as well. They become a burden -- too many toys to clean up; too many clothes to keep track of. Perhaps that is what makes Sukkot a holiday of joy, zman simhateinu, as the rabbis call it. We are joyful because we are freed from our permanent abode with all its many possessions, freed to live out in a simple shed with only simple walls, perhaps a table and some chairs. Simplicity clears the heart for joy.

We go outside, to the world that God created for us, and discover, to our surprise, that all we really need is out there. The roof of our sukkah, the skhakh, must be made exclusively of materials that grow in the ground. And we fill our hands with the lulav and etrog, products of the earth. When we shake the lulav in all directions, we are surrounding ourselves with the simple, God-given pleasures of nature, an escape from our Fisher Price-filled lives.

Perhaps this concern with simplicity explains the emphasis in rabbinic discussions of Sukkot on the law prohibiting the use of a lulav hagazul, a stolen lulav. Stealing shows that one is still in the mind-frame of amassing possessions at all costs, still in the mind-frame of grabbiness and greediness, not yet freed by Sukkot’s message of simplicity.

Sometimes I think that we amass material possessions in order to escape the basic truth of our mortality, that we try to protect ourselves with stuff, putting layers and layers of it between us and death. In the wake of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, with the awe of these days of judgment still upon us, attempting to escape seems futile; we have come face to face with our vulnerability. We know that, as Ecclesiastes – read on the Shabbat of Sukkot – says of man, “He must depart just as he came. As he came out of his mother’s womb, so he must depart at last, naked as he came. He can take nothing of his wealth to carry with him” (5:14). Stuff is not going to help us.

And so we leave our homes, leave our possessions for a week, to live out in a flimsy shed, to admit to ourselves that nothing we own can really protect us. We sit in our sukkot and look up through those tiny mandatory holes in our roofs and rejoice, rejoice at the sight of heaven, at the knowledge that though our stuff may not protect us, there is One above who will. On these days, we are just like the Israelites in the desert who also lived in sukkot – free from the burdens of a permanent home with all its encumbrances, free enough to see heaven and rejoice.

Yom Kippur: Together, Not Alone

2010-09-15T17:29:00.000-07:00

Teshuvah, “repentance,” literally means “return.” On Yom Kippur we return not just to God, the Hasidic master Sefat Emet reminds us, but also to our fellow human beings; Yom Kippur is a time when we repair the rifts between us, when we try to move beyond difference and separation and achieve a special unity.

The mishnah says we are not forgiven on Yom Kippur until we appease our fellow, ad sheyeratzeh et haveiro. The Sefat Emet says what we must do on Yom Kippur is not just to appease, ad sheyeratzeh, but also to be rotzeh our fellows, to actually want them and love them.

This attempt at unity and closeness is directly tied to our experience of God’s greatness both on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We are repeatedly reminded of the contrast between the eternal almighty God and the fragile, mortal human. The distinctions that matter, in other words, the lines that are drawn again and again are only those between heaven and earth. There are no lines drawn among humans. Compared to God, all of us down here are similar. We will all die one day and we are all being judged by God above.

Yom Kippur is the Day of Judgment, but it is not the day of our judgment of our fellows. We are commanded (on other days) to establish a judicial system and sit in judgment of those who do wrong in this world. But on this day, it is God alone who does the judging, and we humans are, all of us, the judged. And this experience of being judged, together, as a group, binds us. We are all in the same boat.

Yom Kippur is the day we become aware of the boat we ride together, like the ship that tossed and turned in the stormy waters of the Jonah story, affecting Jonah as well as all the other sailors aboard. Fasting together, going through the ordeal of not eating or drinking for a day together, provides a concrete experience of exactly this feeling, this sense that we are passing through life, with all its challenges, not alone, but as a community.

And so, when we do viduy, confession, too, we do not speak in the singular, but always in the plural. Ashamnu, bagadnu. Al het shehatanu lefanekha. We, as a community, are guilty; we, not, I, have committed the following sins. In the midst of the soul-searching that these confessions are meant to be, we remind ourselves that we are not alone, that we are all sinners in some way or another, all similarly struggling through life, all in the same boat.

It is precisely through our experience of this day, through our shared confessions, prayers and fasting, through our new awareness of our shared struggles and challenges, that somehow the broken ties between us begin to repair, somehow we do return to each other, return to the kind of unity and community that, the Sefat Emet points out, is the prerequisite for receiving the Torah. Traditionally, Yom Kippur is understood as the day when the people of Israel received the second tablets of the Torah after their initial sin and repentance. The Sefat Emet suggests that part of what made this second giving of the Torah possible was the new height of unity the people achieved through their repentance, their teshuvah – return -- not just to God, but to each other.

Rosh Hashanah First

2010-09-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

Why does Rosh Hashanah come before Yom Kippur?

Yom Kippur is about human beings. It is about our fallibility, our impossible and eternal brokenness, and our attempt to fix that brokenness.

Rosh Hashanah is different. Rosh Hashanah is not about us, good or bad, but about God. On Rosh Hashanah we coronate God; we stand in awe, trembling at His supremacy.

Before we deal with us and our deeds (Yom Kippur), we deal with God (Rosh Hashanah). Our experience of God, our faith in His existence, is the prerequisite for our self-examination, the perspective that frames and fuels our turn into ourselves, the reason that we care who we are and how we act in this world in the first place.

Starting with Rosh Hashanah, starting with a focus on God and not man, also means starting with something very pure and simple, says the Sefat Emet. Rosh Hashanah is traditionally understood as the day God created the world, and the Sefat Emet, following mystical tradition, says that this process involved great fragmentation and differentiation as God’s pure spiritual essence created physical things. The name Rosh Hashanah, says the Sefat Emet, means the time “before,” rosh, “the change,” hashanah. On Rosh Hashanah each year we go back to a time prior to all that change and fragmentation; we have an experience of the original primordial unity.

The shofar blow is our call back to that state. It is, in many ways, a divine voice, the voice God used at Sinai and will use again in the messianic redemption. It is also a primordial sound, a sound without the differentiation of syllables and words and the fragmentation of different languages. It is the most basic and simple of sounds.

When we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, we are trying to remind ourselves of our simple primordial connection to God. The shofar blasts always begin and end with the simple tekiah, that long solid uninterrupted blow. In between are fragments and brokenness, some more broken, like the teruah, and some less broken, like the shevarim. But always these broken sounds must be surrounded, contained, framed by the pure, solid, simple tekia’h¸as if to remind us that such is our task on these days, to try to bring all that human disruption and fragmentation into some kind of simple divine focus. Our daily human lives feel complicated and bifurcated; we are dizzy with stress and pressure from all sides. But Rosh Hashanah calls us to feel the simplicity of a life lived in recognition and service of God.

Throughout this season we recite Psalm 27. One of its most famous lines is Ahat sha’alti me’et hashem, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, only that do I seek; to dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, to frequent His temple.” This is the time of year when we try to make it simple, to concentrate on that ahat, that one thing that matters and shapes everything else.

The Psalm speaks of dwelling in God’s house all our days; this is impossible and also not laudable. We are meant to live out in the world, in all of our and its brokenness. Ps 62 says ahat diber elokim, shtayim zu shamati. “One thing God has spoken; two things have I heard.” God may speak in a single voice, but we humans are incapable of hearing it that way; for us God’s unified word and unified world immediately fragments and multiplies. That is the normal way of human existence. But on Rosh Hashanah we experience what it’s like to dwell in God’s house, to feel surrounded by God’s presence as we are surrounded by the sound of the shofar. And it is that feeling, that sense of clarity and focus that we do carry out into our daily lives, so that we may see and seek the divine at all times, and in such a frame of mind, move on, through ten days of repentance and Yom Kippur, to repair the fragments.

Parashat Devarim and Tisha B'Av: On Rebuke and the Notion of Second Chances

2010-07-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

Nobody likes to be rebuked or criticized.

So what do we do with the Torah’s rebuke, its tochachah? This is the week to talk about it, as rebuke is the theme of both the parsha, the beginning of the new book of Devarim, as well as the theme of the haftarah, Isaiah 1, a prophecy of extreme rebuke. This parsha and haftarah are always timed to coincide with one another and with the Shabbat prior to Tisha B’av, a fast that commemorates the destructions of the Temples and other calamities.

The rabbis say that the word devarim, “words,” was chosen to describe Moshe’s words in this parsha because the root implies harshness and rebuke. Indeed, Moshe speaks harshly to the people here, reminding them of their sins, of how they mistrusted God again and again during their years in the desert and were too fearful, after the spies' report, to enter the land at the first opportunity. Isaiah in the haftarah has his own poetic words of criticism, saying that the people have abandoned God, that their hands are full of blood, that they are evil like Sodom and Gomorrah.

How depressing! Maybe that is our destiny. Maybe, as God says after the flood, man is “evil from his youth (Gen 8:21),” doomed to a life full of mistakes and sins, without hope of ever being different.

Ah, but there is hope. And that is the whole point of rebuke – to inspire change, to make room for second chances. “Wash yourselves clean,” says Isaiah. “Learn to do good.” “Be your sins like crimson, they can turn snow-white; be they red as dyed wool, they can become like fleece.” Here is a strong belief in the possibility of complete self-transformation, of coloring yourself a new color. Rebuke is not meant as a life sentence, but as a call to change. It is an expression not of despair about the nature of humanity, but of faith in humanity’s infinite flexibility, the never-ending possibilities which lie in every human soul. Isaiah calls the heavens and the earth to witness this rebuke; they stand, still and silent, as unchanging, permanent witnesses to the human capability of being just the opposite, not still, but mobile, bending, turning from red to white.

Note that Moshe’s lengthy rebuke of the people does not occur immediately after their various sins, but rather during their 40th year, as the people stand on the border of the promised land, as they stand poised to take their second shot at entering that land. His rebuke is not meant to cause despair, to give the people a life sentence for their sins, but on the contrary, it is meant to inspire them to act differently this time, to embrace their second chance with both hands.

The Torah believes in second chances, as well as in third and fourth chances. That is why we need all the commandments in the first place, as a way of practicing good behaviors so that they become part of our nature. There is no assumption that our nature is automatically good and generous, but that we have the opportunity, again and again, to learn, by practice, to do better. Moshe reminds the people that they were fearful at their first opportunity to enter the land. Now they have been through 40 years of desert travel, 40 years in which God provided for them and fought their battles. Perhaps now they have had enough practice in trust and bravery to be ready to enter the land.

The book of Devarim is itself a kind of second chance. The rabbis call it the mishneh torah, which, like “Deuteronomy,” means the “Second Law,” as it is Moshe’s repetition of most of the laws that came earlier. People need to hear the laws more than once to learn to do them. They need not one opportunity, but many, as learning comes through repetition.

Sometimes the learning is inter-generational. The midrash suggests that rebuke is often done by those approaching death, like Moshe here, in his last year of life. To be a human being is to wake up each morning with the opportunity for a new beginning, for a second chance to live this day differently than the one that preceded it. But such is not the case for the dying. For them the second chances have almost worn out. And yet they do have another kind of second chance -- their children and grandchildren. Through them the possibilities are eternal. The generation that left Egypt was fearful and anxious at the thought of entering a new dangerous land. They died in the desert. But in his own dying days, Moshe looks at this new generation and rebukes them with the aim of repairing the mistakes of their ancestors, with the aim of creating an inter-generational second chance, an opportunity for the people of Israel, past and present, to enter the land with bravery and trust.

Parashat Pinhas: On Taking Your Part

2010-06-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

Ashrei Adam she’hamakom modeh lidvarav. “Fortunate is the person whose words God agrees with,” says the midrash Sifre Bamidbar. It doesn’t happen often, that God affirms the words of a human being. But it happens in this week’s parsha.

The 5 daughters of a man named Tzelafhad approach Moshe with a request. The land of Israel is being divided among tribes and families and their own father is no longer alive and left no sons, through whom the inheritance would normally flow. “Why should our father’s name be lost? Give us a portion,” they say. This is one of 4 legal questions recorded in the Torah which Moshe did not immediately know the answer to, and had to turn to God for guidance. God’s response: Ken bnot Tzelafhad dovrot. “Rightly speak the daughters of Tzelafhand.” Ken. Yes, in modern Hebrew. True. Just so. God affirms these women’s views.

But why? What’s so great about their request? It is essentially a “gimme” request, “Give us some land.” Is such grabbiness to be admired?

The midrash says that their father was the mekoshesh etzim, the man who gathered wood in violation of the Sabbath and was stoned to death (one of the other 4 cases in which Moshe consulted God). To gather wood on Shabbat – that is grabbiness. There are 6 days to do plenty of taking and gathering in the world. But on the seventh it is time to acknowledge that none of it is ours.

These daughters, like their father, wanted to take something, but they took in a way that was appropriate and even admirable. What they wanted to take was their helek, their “portion” in the land that God was giving them. They wanted to “take their part” in the community’s new undertaking. Taking your part is not just a privilege, a gift, but also an obligation, the daughters understood. This is not a time to plead humility, to hide yourself and have your father’s name erased, as if you don’t exist and don’t matter. This is a time to stand up, as the Torah explicitly says they did – vata'amodnah –and demand to take your part.

There is a famous Talmudic saying that when we get to heaven we will have to account for all of the world’s great pleasures that we did not enjoy during our lifetime. The world that God created was meant for taking and enjoying.

There is also another sense of helek, “portion.” When we finish a section of Talmud, the traditional blessing thanks God shesamta helkenu meyoshvei bet hamidrash, for having made our portion, our helek, that of Torah study and not some other less meaningful activity. Such a helek is both a gift and an obligation, as the daughters of Tzelafhad understood. It is the kind of helek that one must not let pass by, but demand to play a part in.

And God celebrates the part we play in his Torah. That is the meaning of the ken He gives to these women. When He created the world, He commanded the earth to bring forth grasses and animals, and the waters to create fish. Vayehi khen. And so it was. The world responded with a ken to God’s commands. Here, the converse occurs in a beautiful way. These daughters take their part in Torah, pointing out a problem in the existing system and a possible solution, and God, for His part, says ken back to them. God affirms our role as His partners in His world and in His Torah. The partnership has limitations, as Tzelafhad, the Sabbath wood-gatherer and his daughters, learned. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t obligated,like those daughters, to take in proportion, to take our helek, to demand that we participate.

Parashat Hukat:The Changing of the Guard

2010-06-16T18:02:00.000-07:00

The school year is ending. Summer vacation is beginning. It is a time of transition, in our lives and also in this week’s parsha.

The Israelites are in their fortieth year of desert travel, most of the generation that left Egypt has died, and now, in this week’s parsha, two of the leaders, Miriam and Aaron, die, too. It is the end of an era, and also the start of a new one, the entrance to the land of Israel.

With the death of one generation and the birth of a new one, there must be some continuity, some passing on of the mantle. The first time messengers are sent from the Israelite camp to a king in this week’s parsha (Num 20:14), Moshe is the sender; the second time, though, the Torah says that the Israelites themselves did the sending (21:21). The passing on of the mantle happens in a literal way,too, with Aaron and his son Eleazar; as part of the ritual of Aaron’s death, Aaron takes off his high priestly clothing and Eleazar puts it on, symbolizing Eleazar’s new status.

Eleazar is also the named priest who is said to enact the ritual of the Red Heifer which begins this parsha. The Red Heifer ritual seems to evoke a feeling of just such continuity in the face of death. The ashes of this red heifer (made redder by the addition of some “crimson stuff”) are mixed with water, to create a red water which must have looked something like blood, and is then sprinkled on any person who comes into contact with the dead. It is as if the continuity of life, its flow from generation to generation -- like the blood that courses through our veins in life -- must be affirmed in the face of the disruptive presence of death.

According to one midrash, Moshe finds God studying Mishnah Parah -- the rabbinic tractate dealing with the Red Heifer -- and quoting one of its great sages, Rabbi Eliezer. Moshe is impressed by the honor God gives to this future sage’s Torah learning and says: “May it be Your will that he (this sage) be among my descendants.” Just as the Red Heifer ritual itself is a response to death, Moshe’s request is also a response to death – hope that his children carry on his Torah project and take it to new heights, making themselves a part of the living, eternal Torah, as the mishnaic Rabbi Eliezer does.

After Miriam dies, there is no water in the camp. The midrash says the well which had accompanied the Israelites in her honor had dried up. Torah is often compared to water. When Miriam died, a well, a source of Torah, died too. It was time for the people to learn to dig their own wells, to take their part in Torah, to become active and creative partners in the Torah’s transmission.

Later in the parsha, the people sing a song about a well. The Torah uses the same phrase to refer to their song here as to the song at the Sea. Az yashir. “Then he sang.” (Num 21:17). The Sefat Emet points out that there, at the Sea, Moshe led the singing, while, here, only Israel sings. He explains that this second song about a well refers not to the Written Torah that Moshe brought down from Sinai, but to the Torah Shebe’al Peh, the Oral Torah which involves active human participation. With their leaders dying, the people are learning to take part in the continual unfolding of Torah, to keep it a Torah that is alive, like the mayim hayim, “the living waters,” which are used in the Red Heifer ritual.

All endings are beginnings. In the face of death, we sprinkle a kind of ritual “blood-water,” a symbol of the new life to come and its continuity to the past. In the face of their leaders’ death, the people face new challenges and responsibilities. They also, like us, bear the burden and the privilege of keeping the Torah alive and vibrant from one generation to the next.

Parashat Korah: Wholly Holy?

2010-06-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

Korah seems to be right. In this week’s parsha, Korah the rebel gathers a gang around him, complaining that Moshe and Aaron have usurped too much authority. Korah and his gang make a populist argument, saying, “The whole congregation, they are all holy, and within them is the Lord. Why then do you lord yourselves over the community of God?” Isn’t Korah right? Aren’t all the people kadosh, “holy?” Isn’t God in every one of us?

Yes and no. Yes, we are all capable of kedushah, holiness, but no, we are not all automatically, intrinsically holy. As Yeshayahu Leibowitz argues, kedushah is not a natural-born privilege, a prerogative of “the chosen people,” but a responsibility, an obligation, a goal to work toward. In the book of holiness, Leviticus, God does not say, “You are holy (already),” but rather, “You shall be holy,” kedoshim teheyu. The only one who is intrinsically holy is God Himself, and it is our project in life to mimic Him through our actions, to strive toward that goal.

The midrash says that Korah and his gang came to Moshe wearing cloaks made entirely of techelet -- that special blue thread normally used for tzitzit, for the ritual fringes worn on garments – and said, “Why would we need to wear tzitzit on such garments as these, when the entire garment is made of techelet?” Moshe responded that such garments would nonetheless require tzitzit, a response that elicited mockery from the rebels.

Here is what they were saying: We, the people of Israel, are like these techelet garments. We are already all holy; we do not need any special rituals and we do not need any special leaders to make us holy. We are of our very essence techelet, nobility.

Ahh. But humans are never of their very essence techelet. That is the whole point of tzitzit. It is a much needed reminder to be holy, because humans err, humans forget, humans get distracted by unimportant things.

The people’s time in the desert, and indeed much of the Torah’s narrative, is filled with complaints and mistakes and wrong turns. Just last week the people wrongly followed the 10 scouts into a state of despair about the conquest of the land of Israel. This is not a perfect total techelet people, a people so holy they have no need of laws and leaders to help them in their holiness quest. Perhaps the Torah deals at such length with all of these failures to make this point abundantly clear -- kedushah is not a given, but a goal. The Torah is a process book; it offers tools to help in this life struggle, not congratulatory handshakes on our natural holy state.

As Rabbi Yossi says in Pirkei Avot, you should prepare yourself to work hard at the Torah, to really earn it, because the Torah is not your yerushah, your inheritance, automatically yours (1:1). Korah thought holiness was his inheritance, his prerogative. He prepared himself not to toil and struggle, but to take and receive – vayikah Korah, “Korah took.” But, as the last line of Pirkei Avot says, no pain, no gain – lefum tzara agra -- according to the pain, the dedication, the struggle, so is the reward.

Parashat Shelach: Different Kinds of Vision

2010-06-02T17:23:00.000-07:00

Shelach lekha -- send out 12 scouts to the land of Israel in preparation for its conquest -- is God’s command to Moshe at the start of this parsha. The command is similar in sound to another, much earlier one in history, God’s command to Avraham also to go to the land of Israel, lekh lekha.

Both Avraham and the 12 scouts traverse the land from one end to the other, but in opposite directions. Avraham arrives from the north, makes his way to the south, out to Egypt and then back up again from south to north. The scouts begin in the desert south and move up to the hilly north and back down again and out through the desert to meet up with Moshe and the Israelites.

They travel in opposite directions and they react in opposite ways. Avraham is a visionary. When he sees the land, he does not just see soil and produce, people and fortified cities. He sees God; he sees the future; he sees his descendants’ destiny. His faith in God’s promises is so strong that the future – though 400 years away – seems real and secure to him; he can see it and imagine it. Avraham is the kind of person of whom it is said, on multiple occasions, that “he raised up his eyes and saw.” When he sees, he looks upward, to heaven, and to the stars which represent his future of innumerable children.

Not so his great-great-great . . . grandchildren, the scouts (or at least 10 out of 12 of them). They were not visionaries, but land appraisers. They looked not up at the stars, but down at the grapes. They did no stand tall with faith in God and their promised destiny, but squatted like grasshoppers in the fields, burdened down by the weight of the fruit they carried.

Mired in physical realities, the 10 scouts return to report that the land will be impossible for the Israelites to conquer. They have no vision, no faith, no imagination, no spirit. And so, their words come true. For them. For such as them, the land is indeed impossible to conquer. Great things happen only to those who believe in them. Yehoshua and Calev, the 2 lone good scouts, say “Yes, we can do it,” and so, eventually, they do. But to the 10 doubting scouts, God says He will do exactly as they predicted; they will indeed not enter the land; “In this very wilderness shall your carcasses drop (14:32).” They have turned themselves into nothing but carcasses, flesh without spirit.

The antidote to such an attitude, the key to having a more Avraham-like frame of mind is given in the final part of this parsha -- tzitzit, the fringes worn on four-cornered garments. What is the point of wearing such strings on the corners of one’s garments? “You shall see it and you shall remember all the commandments.” Vision. Learning how to see right. Rashi suggests that one of the roots for the word tzitzit is in fact related to seeing, to being metzitz. Tzitzit are a visual reminder of how to view the world, of how not to be, like the 10 scouts, merely appraisers of physical reality, of how to train oneself to see like Avraham, with vision, faith and imagination.

The Torah says tzitzit should have one cord of blue, techelet. The rabbis suggest that this color was chosen in order to remind one of heaven, to remember to look up. The word used to refer to the corners of the garments on which tzitzit are worn is kanaf, a word that also refers to a bird’s wing. Tzitzit are an attempt to give humans, mired to the ground through forces of gravity, the wings to fly high, to lift themselves up like Avraham, and become aware not just of the grapes below but also of the heavens above.

Parashat Beha'alotekha: On Humility

2010-05-26T17:56:00.000-07:00

When Gooney Bird -- a children’s book character in second grade-- takes out a bib to wear at lunch one day, the other children wonder why she isn’t embarrassed to wear something so babyish, and she says simply, “I am never ever embarrassed.”

What does it take to not be embarrassed? A healthy ego? A feeling of self-confidence and security? Yes. But surprisingly, the Torah tells us it takes something else, too. Humility, a sense of one’s small place in the universe, a sense that one’s ego is not so important as to warrant constant defending.

In this week’s parsha, Beha’alotekha, Moshe is faced with two situations in which he might have been embarrassed or angry, but in both, like Gooney Bird, he is not. 70 elders are taken to the Tent of Meeting to receive a little of Moshe’s divine prophetic spirit. When someone comes to inform Moshe that two other elders, Eldad and Medad, have been prophesying, on their own, inside the camp, instead of under Moshe’s direction, Yehoshua is outraged on Moshe’s behalf, suggesting the two be imprisoned. But Moshe himself? He says: “If only the whole nation of God were prophets!” (Num 11:29). Because he is not concerned with his own ego, he does not feel threatened, but can honestly celebrate others’ success.

In the second situation, Aharon and Miriam, Moshe’s brother and sister, gossip and complain about him. The Torah does not record a reaction by Moshe, but instead tells us that Moshe is “a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth” (12:3). Being a truly humble person, Moshe does not consider such slights against his person worthy of attention.

King David was also known for his humility. Even though he was a powerful king, he danced like a peasant before the Holy Ark as it was being transferred from city to city. His wife, Michal, peeking from a window, thought he should be ashamed, that such frolicking did not befit royalty. But David, like Gooney Bird, was not embarrassed. He understood that to humble oneself in joyful servitude of God is never embarrassing.

Moshe’s humility, too, must have stemmed in part from his sense that what he was doing was working and dancing before God. His constant and intimate contact with God – it is in this week’s parsha, too, that we hear that he spoke to God “mouth to mouth” (12:8)—must have given him a sense of perspective on his smallness, and also, a sense of the largeness of something else, the largeness of God and of God’s project, the Torah. In relation to these large projects that really matter, concerns for one’s own ego become petty, frivolous, unimportant.

This exceeding humility is the only great quality explicitly attributed to Moshe. Not intellectual brilliance. Not physical prowess. Humility. Moshe was the person who wrote the whole Torah, was God’s conduit for it all. Why? According to one ancient rabbi, Torah is compared to water because it flows to the lowest place, to the person who has managed to make himself most humble, and therefore most open to divine gifts. Such a person was Moshe.

Such a person was also the great sage Hillel. The law is decided according to the House of Hillel, says the Talmud, because of their great humility, because they always quoted the opinion of their rivals, the House of Shammai, before their own opinion (Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 13b). Humility leads to a kind of openness to all truths, an acknowledgment that each of us has only a small piece of the truth and that we therefore need to be open to one another. If you’re too worried about your own performance, your own ego, you often can’t hear what anyone else has to say. The humble person, by not worrying about embarrassment, becomes a vessel into which water flows easily from all sources.

Bemidbar/Shavu'ot: Linking Arms

2010-05-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

In a children’s book by Lois Lowry, second-grader Gooney Bird Greene, who has no siblings, is charged with the task of writing a short poem about her family. When it is her turn to recite her poem, she requests others to come stand up at the front of the classroom with her. Her teacher and all the students in the class stand with her, holding hands in a long line encircling the classroom, as she reads: “I’m an only/ But not lonely.”

This week we start a new book of the Torah, Bemidbar. We are all fundamentally bamidbar, ”in the desert,” alone. Perhaps that is why the Torah begins this book with a census. Counting people puts them together into a group, reminds people that they have each other, that they are part of a larger entity.

My 3-year old loves to count. Lately, what he is fascinated by is how numbers are surrounded by one another. “4 comes before 5 and after 3, right? 6 comes before 7 and after 5?” That’s what numbers do; they form a line, connecting one digit to the next one. We are in the midst of counting from the holiday of Passover to the holiday of Shavuot for precisely this reason, to form a chain of links from one holiday to the other, to attach them to each other.

Devek. That’s the modern Hebrew word for glue. It is also the word used in this week’s chapter of Pirkei Avot to describe one of the attributes associated with Torah study, dibbuk haverim, “attachment to friends or fellows” (6:6). And it is also the word used to describe Ruth’s activity in the book of Ruth, to be read on the upcoming holiday of Shavu’ot. Rut davkah bah. “Ruth stuck with her,” stuck with Naomi, her mother-in-law.

Here is the context: Naomi and her husband Elimelech leave the land of Israel during a famine and settle in Moab. According to the midrash, they were a wealthy family and left the land because they did not want to share their bread with all their hungry brethren during a famine. In Moab, the family’s two sons marry Moabite wives, Ruth and Orpah, and then father and both sons die. Naomi and her two daughters-in-law set out to return to the land of Israel. Orpah, whose name means something like “back of the neck,” turns her back on Naomi and returns to Moab, while Ruth sticks with Naomi.

Ruth’s act is a tikkun, a reparation, for the act of her father-in-law in leaving the land of Israel in the first place. He did not “count” himself to be one of his brethren during their time of trouble. Ruth, though a foreigner, counts herself a part of Naomi’s family and nation, even during hard times, after both sons have died.

That is what it means to be loyal, to stick with someone through thick and thin, like a 3 sticks to a 4. Another of the attributes associated with Torah study in that same Pirkei Avot list (6:6) is nose be’ol im haveiro, “one who shares in the burden of his fellow,” one who links arms with his fellow in times of trouble as well as times of joy.

Such behavior is modeled by God Himself, who, Rashi says, is constantly counting the people of Israel because He loves them so much. When does He count them? Through good times and bad, when they triumphantly leave Egypt together, their first act as a nation, and again, after their first big sin, the sin of the Golden Calf. Here, now, in the beginning of the book of Bemidbar, God counts them again, this time because He wishes to reside among them, to count Himself a part of them as they travel through the lonely desert, their camp like linked arms surrounding His tabernacle home.

Parashat Behar/Bekhukotai: Walking with the Torah

2010-05-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

The first of this week’s double parshiyyot, Behar, begins by telling us that the commandments which follow, mostly concerning the Sabbatical (shmita) and Jubilee (yovel) years, were delivered Behar Sinai, at Mount Sinai.

Rashi, citing the midrash Sifra, asks the famous question: Mah inyan shmita etzel har Sinai? What does the law of the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai? Why tell us that Mount Sinai was the location for this mitzvah?

I want to spin this question and broaden it. Mah inyan shmita etzel har Sinai? Why is it relevant for the Israelites to study shmita – which only applies in the land of Israel – at Mount Sinai, in the middle of the desert? And why is it relevant for us, who live in the exile, in America, to study this portion of the Torah at all? Moreover, on a larger scale, one could and often feels like asking this question concerning the whole book of Leviticus, which we are concluding this week: Why bother reading about all of the priestly and sacrificial laws when we no longer have a Temple? Mah inyan Vayikra etzel Albany? Of what relevance is the book of Leviticus to the Jews of Albany today?

Notice that the Torah’s Temple laws are taught primarily in relation to the mishkan, the Tabernacle, a home for God each part of which has holes and poles for transportation. It is God’s mobile home, a portable Temple for the long desert journey. The Tabernacle’s portability symbolizes the Torah’s own portability. The Torah – land-related laws like shmita and all -- was not given in the land of Israel, but in the desert, as part of a long journey. It is a portable book, meant for all people, in all places and at all times.

Parts of the Torah cannot always be applied or enacted, but they can always be studied. Rashi, again following the midrash Sifra, emphasizes the study element of our relationship to the Torah in his interpretation of the first verse of the second of our two parshiyyot, Bekhukotai. The second phrase in that verse, “And observe My commandments,” clearly refers to the observance of the laws, so what does the first phrase –Im bekhukotai telekhu, literally, “If you walk in My laws,” -- tell you? That you should be amelim baTorah, “working at the Torah,” engaged in the work of its study. How can you “walk” with God’s Torah, make it portable, and carry it with you from place to place and age to age? By studying it. Some laws may not apply, but they can always and everywhere be studied. The laws of shmita were given on Mount Sinai, where they did not apply, to show that from the start, the Torah had parts that were not immediately applicable, but that were nonetheless to be studied and honored.

Parashat Bekhukotai presents a choice between the observance and non-observance of God’s laws. But there is also another choice, the choice of how to view the Torah, whether as a source of continued relevance for study or as a dead, antiquated book. A midrash on parashat Behar speaks of the power of the tongue to either bring life or death. If the mouth breathes on a coal, the coal comes to life and burns brightly, but if the mouth spits on the coal, the coal dies. The Torah is the same. We can either view it as a dying ember, or as a coal we can ignite into flames.

The reward is commensurate to the task. If we do “walk” with God’s Torah, and keep it relevant and aflame, the parsha tells us that one of the blessings we will receive is that God will “walk along with us,” vihithalakhti betokhakhem. The Sforno points out that the word vehethalakhti does not imply a particular destination, but a kind of wondering from place to place. If we walk with the Torah, bringing it wherever we go, then God promises to walk alongside us, too, wherever we go.

Parashat Emor: On Fields Without Corners

2010-04-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

Uvekutsrekhem et ketzir artzekhem. “When you reap the harvest of your land” (Lev 23:22 and 23:10). What then? What do you do with your successes, your accomplishments, your wealth, your good fortune? Two things, according to the Torah. One in relation to God and the other in relation to people.

First, you bring the new harvest before God, to the Temple, once at Passover time and then again, a second new harvest, at Shavu’ot time. The time between these two holidays and their special harvest gifts, 7 weeks or 49 days, is counted, day by day, a count known as Sefirat HaOmer.

Second -- and the Torah interrupts its discussion of the holiday calendar to tell us this, even though the law already appeared once in the last parsha – when you reap your harvest you must leave the corners of your fields for the poor.

Take two actions when you achieve success. First, acknowledge that your achievements are not entirely your own doing, that you owe your good fortune to the God who has blessed you. Uvekutsrekhem et ketzir artzekhem. When you reap the harvest of your land, you might be tempted to think that it is all shelakhem, all yours ; you can hear this sense of ownership in the repetition of the suffix –khem. But no, the first step is to bring some piece of it to God, to move yourself toward a place of gratitude and humility. Out of this sense of humility, a turn to the poor is natural, easy. If the harvest is not entirely yours or your accomplishment, then it belongs equally to others, especially to those others whom God cares about, the needy.

The point of all this giving, according to the Sefer HaHinukh, is not only to feed the poor, but also to train one’s heart to feel content and blessed, and therefore generous, to have the feeling that one’s portion overflows, like the cup of wine at Havdalah. Even poor people are obligated to leave the corners of their fields untouched; after all, they, too, need to cultivate this feeling of blessedness and contentment, and the more one gives, the more one feels one has to give. In not cutting the edges, one acts grandly, generously, and trains oneself to feel that there is enough to spare.

Here, too, there is a deep connection to the Passover-Shavu’ot holiday period. The count from one holiday to the other is to last for sheva shavu’ot temimot, seven complete weeks. Shavu’ot is a celebration of fullness or contentment, both the fullness of the harvest and the fullness of time. The daily count reinforces this sense of contentment, as each day of life, of breath, is acknowledged to be a gift from God, and a source of great blessedness.

As it says in this week’s chapter of Pirkei Avot – there is a tradition of reading one chapter a week of this 7-chapter work between Passover and Shavu’ot – “Who is wealthy? He who is happy or content with his lot.”

Parashat Aharei-Mot/Kedoshim: Looking Out for Each Other

2010-04-19T17:59:00.000-07:00

The second of this week’s two parshiyyot, Kedoshim, begins with the command to be kadosh, “holy,” in imitation of God’s holiness. What does it mean to be holy? The parsha continues with a series of many short commandments which together define the parameters of our holiness assignment. The commandments range from pe’ah, the leaving of the corners of one’s field for the poor to an injunction against lying to the need to eat a sacrifice within a prescribed time and place.

Let’s look at one representative example of these commandments. Lifne iver lo titen mikhshol. “Before a blind person, you shall not put an obstacle” (Lev 19:14). The classical rabbis interpret this commandment very broadly, to refer to a suma badavar, “a blind person with respect to a certain matter” or even, as Maimonides puts it, a person who is so blinded by his desires that he does not see the right path. One should not place an obstacle in front of such people, meaning that one should not give them bad advice or create an opportunity for them to sin.

Here are some examples the rabbis give (based on Nehama Leibowitz’s discussion). Do not advise someone to sell his field in exchange for a donkey, bad business advice which the advisor is giving for his own benefit. Do not sell weapons to a robber. If you do, you are creating new opportunities for him to sin, and in this, you, too, are considered culpable. Make sure to mark all graveyards so that you do not create an opportunity for a priest to defile himself unknowingly. Do not hit your son if he is larger than you for it creates an opportunity for him, in his largeness, to hurt you, a cardinal sin. Do not lend money to someone without witnesses or some form of documentation. One might think that such an act is generous, but it creates an opportunity for the borrower to sin by not returning the loan.

In other words, be aware of one another’s weaknesses and blind-spots and take precautions to protect people from themselves. One might have expected that the need to have witnesses during a loan transaction would arise as a protection of the lender, to ensure that his funds are returned. But no, here the emphasis is on the lender’s need to protect the borrower from wrongful action.

The structure of the verse speaks to this emphasis on human weakness. The verse does not say, “Do not place an obstacle before a blind person,” but “Before a blind person, do not place an obstacle.” In other words, first condition yourself to being aware of the blindness of others, of their special needs and difficulties, and then you will know how not to place an obstacle before them.

Among other things, then, kedushah, holiness, involves connectedness with others and concern for their special weaknesses. The Holy One Himself modeled such behavior. On the way out of Egypt, He led the people the back route for He knew that they would become fearful at the sight of war and want to return to Egypt (Ex 13:17). Worrying over the weaknesses of others is a part of divine holiness.

Later in this parsha, the Torah reminds us to rebuke one another in order not to “incur any guilt because of him” (Lev 19:17). The Sefat Emet reads the Hebrew, lo tisa alav het, literally, “do not carry on him a sin,” as meaning “do not throw the sin totally onto him.” Consider your own culpability in his sin as well. When one person is doing the wrong thing, we who are part of his community are somehow all a part of that wrong, all culpable for not having created an environment without obstacles, for not having protected him from himself.

On Passover and Inclusion

2010-03-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

Redemption does not happen alone in Judaism, not in solitude or silent contemplation, but in joyous family and communal celebration. Our Seders follow the model of the first Passover celebration in Egypt, in which the paschal sacrifice was eaten in groups. Haggadah means telling. We are talkers. We experience redemption by talking to each other, and for such an experience, we cannot be alone.

Nor is this an elite holiday. All are to be included. Moshe told Pharaoh, bena’areinu uvezkeineinu neileikh, “with our youth and our elderly we will go.” Pharaoh thought that only the middle age males should go to worship God, but Moshe understood that this religion was for everyone, that redemption is not complete unless all parts of the nation are involved.

The Haggadah makes this point clear right from the start. Its entire first section is concerned with defining its audience in as broad a way as possible. We begin in Aramaic (ha lahma anya) -- which for years was the lingua franca in the Jewish world -- as a way to open up the Seder to all, whether or not they are speakers of Hebrew. Ha lahma anya, we say. “This is the bread of poverty (or affliction) that our fathers ate in Egypt.” And what lesson do we learn from this memory of our humble origins? Openness and inclusion. Kol dikhfin yete veyekhul. Let all who are hungry, come and eat. Let all who are needy, come and join in our Passover celebration. The Seder is for everyone, the poor, the rich, and anyone who has some need, whether financial, emotional or social. The important word here is kol, ALL.

Nor is this a holiday for the scholarly elite. First, a story is told about a group of learned rabbinic sages who stayed up all night discussing the exodus, but then, immediately afterwards, come the 4 sons, one wise, one wicked, one simple and one who does not even know how to ask. The Seder is for all these audiences at once. It has passages of intricate Torah discussion as well as folk songs, prayers and simple statements. It has words and it also has actions like the dipping of food into salt water, the eating of bitter herbs and matzah, the leaning to the left. There are those at the Seder, like my 3-year-old, who don’t just want to talk about the exodus experience, but actually want to feel it, to act it out. The Seder is meant to include all these groups.

There is one more group that is included in our Seders, and this group, too, is essential for our experience of redemption – all those many generations of Jews who have celebrated Passover before us, in other places and other circumstances, in Poland and in Russia, in Ethiopia and in Spain, in comfort and freedom and in war and persecution. Over and again, we refer to them. Bekhol dor vador, we say. “In every generation.” There is that word kol, “all,” again. In every generation one must feel that she has left Egypt. In every generation, we have had oppressors and been saved from them. In every generation the Seder has been celebrated, and our own celebration connects to this kol, links us through time to this “all.”

What does it mean to be redeemed from mitzrayim, the Hebrew word for Egypt? The word has famously been connected to the word tzar, narrow. How can we be redeemed from the narrow places in our lives, from the narrow limits of our individual selves and perspectives? Through a celebration which brings together old and young, learned and ignorant, pious and doubting, those alive and those no longer alive. Together we form a kol that is klal yisrael, the entirety of Israel. It is only when we sit and talk and eat with each other that we move beyond our narrow selves and experience redemption.

Parashat Vayikra: On Sacrifices and Intimacy

2010-03-17T07:10:00.000-07:00

This week we start a new book of the Torah, Vayikra, or as the rabbis called it, Torat Kohanim, the teaching of the priests, a name which is similar in meaning to the English “Leviticus,” the book of Levites/priests. This new book. whose subject is holiness and purity, begins with instructions concerning the sacrificial system.

While this book is generally given short shrift by modern readers, it was a favorite of the classical rabbis, the first book in their curriculum for young students. In its placement as the middle book of the 5 books of the Torah, it also represents the heart of the Torah.

And yet, here we are, in 2010, reading a book about animal sacrifices. How can we possibly relate?

Let’s begin with the first few verses. Moshe is instructed by God to say the following to the Israelites: Adam ki yakriv mikem korban lashem. “When a person brings close from among you an offering to God,” then, says the verse, it should be from the following animals, . . . What is strange about this verse, as many commentators have noted, is its use and placement of the word mikem, “from among you.” There is no need for this word, and the word is also placed strangely not after the word for “person,” Adam, but rather after the word for “bring close,” yakriv. “When you bring close from among you,” the verse says. What does this mean?

Rabbenu Behayei suggests that the word comes to warn us against human sacrifice. “When a person wants to bring an offering from you, i.e. from the human population,” don’t do it. Instead, bring an animal. The Talmud (Sukkah 30a) learns from the word mikem that sacrifices brought from stolen goods are not allowed; the offering must be from you, i.e. belonging to you, and not to someone else.

My favorite interpretation is that of the Abravanel and Sforno, both of whom see the word mikem as referring to the giving of oneself to God. You should bring from yourselves, meaning a piece of yourself, of your energy and passion, to the service of God. In a way, this interpretation picks up on the previous one, concerning stolen goods; the offering needs to be yours, not just in the sense of ownership, but also in the sense of coming from inside yourself. This interpretation is also an interesting twist of the warning against human sacrifice. On the one hand, human sacrifice is prohibited, but on the other hand, it is precisely the sacrifice of something human, some piece of yourself, which is required. Animals take your place, but are meant to represent you, with their blood and guts, so that you, too, feel that you are bringing some part of yourself to God.

Why? Why bring an animal or a piece of yourself to God? In English, the word for such offerings is “sacrifice.” In Hebrew, it is korban. The root of korban is closeness. Yes, the call is for a sacrifice, is for the bringing of something precious from you to God, but the goal is not asceticism, the sacrifice of some earthly good to God, but kirvah, closeness, intimacy with God.

Such intimacy cannot be experienced without sacrifice, without giving some piece of yourself. One holds dear the people to whom one gives. It is for this reason that parents feel so close to their children; the constant acts of giving and sacrifice lead to tight bonds. God gave us the framework of sacrificial offerings not in order to feed Him, Heaven forbid, but in order to give humans a chance, through a system of constant sacrificial giving, to feel close to Him.

We don’t have animals to offer up anymore. But there are other ways of giving, other ways of sacrificing ourselves in the service of God, other forms of mesirus nefesh. As the famous rabbinic saying goes, lefum tsara, agra, “According to the pain is the gain.” The Torah’s demands can be quite taxing and overwhelming, in terms of time, energy and resources. Anyone who has prepared for Passover or walked to synagogue on a cold wet Shabbat can attest to the sacrifice involved. At the same time, it is precisely the taxing nature of the system which makes it so rewarding, which draws one in, turning a “sacrifice” into a korban, a hardship into a source of intimacy and connection.

Perhaps the book of Vayikra begins with animal sacrifices in order to teach us, first and foremost, how to give of ourselves. The book begins with these offerings to God, but at the heart of this middle book are also instructions concerning how we treat others, concerning the gifts we are to leave for the poor in our fields. Generosity is a practice, and the sacrificial system habituates one to this practice of giving, giving to God, giving to the priests who depend on such offerings for their livelihood, and giving to the needy. Such giving, both of financial gifts and of oneself, mikem, is the indeed the heart of the Torah.

Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei: On Shabbat and the Tabernacle

2010-03-10T07:24:00.000-08:00

When my sister was little, she saw a house being built and said: “God created everything in the world except that house.”

She was noticing something important. We talk about God’s creation of the world, but we humans are also little creators, mimicking God’s creation through our manipulation of His raw materials, making houses out of trees, shoes out of leather, plastic out of petroleum, blogs out of Torah.

The work of the mishkan (tabernacle) involved just such fine human manipulation of raw materials, the cutting and shaping of wood, the melding of metals and the weaving of fabrics. In many ways, the description of this human work parallels the story of God’s creation of the world, as classical and contemporary commentators have pointed out. In both accounts the word asah, “to make,” plays an important role; in both there is a similar statement regarding the completion of the work; and in both there is the creation of lights and curtain-firmaments to separate spaces. God created the world for humans, and it is as if humans are then commanded to build a little mini-world for God to dwell in.

What a tremendous honor is here given to human talents and creativity! The Torah spends only a scant portion of a parsha on God’s creation of the world, but over four parshiyyot on the human construction of the mishkan!

And yet, there is a difference between divine creativity and human creativity, and the Torah, even in its celebration of human potential, also puts on some brakes. In last week’s parsha, after God finishes giving Moshe the instructions concerning the Tabernacle, He says to him: Akh et Shabtotai tishmoru. “But you should still keep My Sabbaths.” And here, again, in parashat Vayakhel, just before Moshe begins to tell the people about the mishkan, he reminds them first about Shabbat. Even in the midst of the holiest of human creative enterprises, the building of the mishkan, the Israelites must stop their work to observe Shabbat and remember who the Creator of the world is.

The work which is prohibited on Shabbat is in fact defined by the work done in the construction of the mishkan. The same word is used for both, melakhah. Whatever type of melakhah (39 in all) was required for the erection of the mishkan and its appurtenances, that is the work which is prohibited on the Sabbath.

Melakhah involves human manipulation of the environment created by God. This week’s version of the Sabbath commandment ends with a prohibition against burning fire. Why? Yeshayahu Leibowitz suggests that fire represents the beginning of human civilization; through fire, people learned to manipulate nature’s materials to create the secondary products they desired. By not burning fire on Shabbat, we pause to acknowledge the limits to our own creative powers, to acknowledge that the world exists without our intervention, and was created without our help.

But Shabbat does not teach only about itself. The commandment concerning Shabbat includes both the prohibition against work on the seventh day as well as a positive commandment to work on the six days preceding it. Rest on Shabbat, and during the week, work in a way that remembers that rest, that remembers its lesson of God’s sovereignty. What kind of work is that? Work like the construction of the mishkan, work that is done leshem shamayim, for the sake of heaven, work that takes the best of human talent and energy and plows them into the creation of a world that, like the mishkan, is a place in which God can dwell. In a way, then, Shabbat is not just a counterpoint to the work of the mishkan but also a partner to it; Shabbat and the mishkan deliver opposing messages, but also integrated, overlapping ones. When you rest and when you work, remember your Creator.

Parashat Ki Tisa: The Sandwich Parsha

2010-03-03T08:36:00.000-08:00

This week’s parsha, Ki Tisa, relates the sin of the Golden Calf and its aftermath. The parsha is sandwiched on either side by parshiyyot dealing with the erection of the mishkan, the Tabernacle -- parshiyyot Terumah and Tetzaveh on one side and Vayakhel and Pekudei on the other.

Nehama Leibowitz outlines a basic disagreement among classical commentators as to the actual order of events. According to many rabbinic midrashim, as well as Rashi, Maimonides and others, the Golden Calf took place first, and God only ordered the erection of the mishkan as a reaction to the sin of the Golden Calf. By creating an idol out of gold, the people showed that they had need of a more concrete form of worship, and the mishkan was an accommodation to this need.

According to Nachmanides, however, the order of events is as it stands in the Torah. God ordered the construction of the mishkan, the people sinned, and then, after the people repented and God forgave them, Moshe was allowed to continue with the instructions for the mishkan as a sign of this forgiveness and God’s continued desire to reside among His people.

Building on these classical notions, I want to ask the question a little differently: Whether or not the events took place in this order, why does the Torah tell the story in this way? What message is conveyed by this enveloping structure of – mishkan, sin and forgiveness, mishkan?

The orders for the construction of the Tabernacle and its furniture and utensils are quite detailed and precise. Everything in God’s house must be just-so; these are holy things and a holy place where God will dwell.

What happens in the middle of all this divine order, holiness and perfection, is the messy truth about human beings. The mishkan symbolizes God’s desire to reside on earth, among His people. But His people are human beings, fraught with imperfection. The Golden Calf episode points out these imperfect qualities. The people are impatient for Moshe to come down; they are doubting and impulsive, having very quickly forgotten their experiences of God in Egypt, at the Sea and at Sinai. And they are base and unholy, eating, drinking, laughing and making loud merry sounds when they should have been serious.

Such is the nature of humanity. We are insecure and doubting, base, impulsive and impatient. Can God reside amongst such? It is almost as if the people are testing Him, acting out their worst qualities as if to say: Can you really live with this?

The answer, on God’s part, after some coaxing from Moshe, is definitely yes. There is anger and punishment after the Golden Calf, but there is also forgiveness and the forgiveness is long and exceedingly intimate. In fact, it is during this process of forgiveness that the most intimate moment between God and a human occurs, when God physically “passes over” Moshe and tells him all of His special attributes.

The mishkan’s construction is not the only thing that happens twice in this series of parshiyyot. There are also two sets of luhot, tablets. The first are thrown down and broken by Moshe in anger at the Golden Calf. That could have been the end of the God-Israel relationship. But no. Humans are humans and will be imperfect, and this is a relationship that will always have room for second chances. A second set of luhot; a second chance to build a mishkan.

The implication of the structure of these parshiyyot is that what stands at the heart of the building of this perfect divine dwelling place is imperfection, sin and forgiveness. At the same time, what contains, supports and buttresses this messy relationship in the middle is the building itself, the walls of the mishkan which, like the parshiyyot, stand on either side of the mess. The divine-human relationship needs structure and holiness on the one hand, and on the other hand, it also needs to allow room for mistakes and anger and the growth in intimacy which result from such encounters.

Parashat Zachor and Purim

2010-02-25T07:45:00.000-08:00

This Shabbat, at the end of the Torah reading, we read Parashat Zachor, one of four special readings for this time of year.

Zachor. Remember. Remember what the Amalekites did to you, how they attacked you from behind, when you were weak and tired. Zachor. Remember, too, the Nazis of our generation and the six million Jews they slaughtered. Never forget.

Remembering is what we Jews do best. We put on tefillin in order to remember the mitzvot. We celebrate Shabbat in order to remember creation and the exodus. We celebrate Sukkot in order to remember our experience in the desert.

Sometimes these memories are too much, too heavy for us. It is hard to live in the present and hope for a good future when one spends too much time contemplating the Holocaust. As a people we are weighed down by our memories of suffering.

And that is where Purim comes in.

We read Parashat Zachor every year on the Shabbat before Purim because Haman, the villain of Purim, is a descendant of Amalek, an example of precisely the type of evil we are commanded to remember.

On the one hand, Purim, like other holidays, is a holiday of remembering; the mitzvah is to hear every single syllable of the megillah read twice in 24 hours. On the other hand, on Purim we say that one should drink until one can no longer tell the difference, ad delo yada, between the good and the bad characters of the story, between the cursed Haman and the blessed Mordecai. One should drink oneself into a state of happy oblivion, into a state of not knowing and not remembering. This is not Zachor, but a kind of anti-Zachor.

Maybe this is part of the special simchah, happiness, of Purim. On Purim, we try to be joyful like only children are joyful; children don’t worry about the past and the future; they are present and alive to the fun of the moment. Yes, Purim is a remembrance. But with its light, carnival-like frolicking, it is also a mockery of remembrance, also an escape from the clutches of history, an escape from the serious adult task of making order out of an often cruel world.

Purim sanctifies this joy, sanctifies for one precious day this escape from memory and order, making it, too, part of the spiritual experience of the year. Psalm 35 says : Kol atzmotay tomarna Hashem mi kamokha. With all of my limbs I declare: “Lord, who is like you?” Not just with all of my limbs, but also with all of my emotions, with sadness and with joy, with seriousness and with frolicking, with memory and with an escape from memory. All are part of the religious experience.

In light of the lightness of Purim, I have included some Purim riddles as well. Enjoy!

Purim Puzzlers

2010-02-25T07:11:00.000-08:00

Purim Riddles
1. Which one of Haman’s sons worked for Verizon?
2. How do we know that Haman was pregnant?
3. How do we know that the king used to sit on his Dr. Seuss books?
4. How do you know Mordecai liked to read the labels on his clothes?
5. How do you know that at the women’s banquet in the beginning of the Megillah, the women drank tea with soap in it (and spoke with a German accent)?
6. How do you know Vashti had 2 heads?
7. How do you know the people of Shushan were hard of hearing?
8. How do you know the Jews wore designer clothes when they were victorious?
9. How do you know Esther’s favorite servant had an ugly head covering?
10. What is the significance of each of these numbers in the megillah: 3, 7, 10, 12, 13, 127, 180?
11. (From my son, Medad) What do Tu Bishvat and Purim have in common?

Answers to Purim Puzzlers

2010-02-25T07:06:00.001-08:00

Answers to Riddles
1. Dalphon (Esther 9:7) – “Dial a Phone”
2. The Megillah says Haman Hara (Esther 7:6). Literally this means “The evil Haman” but the word hara, spelled differently, means “pregnant.”
3. The Megillah says Sus Asher Rachav Alav ha-Melekh (Esther 6:8). Literally, this means “a horse that the king rode upon,” the word in Hebrew for horse being sus, like Seuss.
4. When Mordechai is distressed about the fate of the Jews, the Megillah says, Vayikra Mordechai et Begadav (Esther 4:1). “Mordechai ripped his clothes.” The word Vayikra here means “ripped,” but spelled differently means “read.”
5. The queen’s name is Vashti. Vash tea. Wash tea.
6. The Megillah says: Vashti HaMalkah astah mishteh nashim (Esther 1:9). Literally, “Queen Vashti made a banquet for the women.” The riddle plays on the words mishteh nashim, reading it as “Out of two women” instead of “a banquet for the women.”
7. The Megillah begins by saying, Vayehi Biyemei Achashverosh Hu Achashverosh. Literally, this means, “It happened in the days of Achashverosh, that is the Achashverosh,” but the riddle reads the word hu as “Who?” It was in the days of Achashverosh. Who? Achashverosh!
8. Layehudim hayeta Orah Vesimchah V. Sasson (8:16). Literally, “The Jews had light and joy and happiness,” but here read as “The Jews had light and joy and V. Sasson clothing.”
9. His name was Hatach – Hat –uch!
10. Third year of king’s rule; seven and 180 days of banquet; 10 sons of Haman; 12th month, Adar; 13th day of that month; 127 provinces ruled over by the king.
11. On both, “dates” are picked!

I also prepared some picture puzzles, but am having trouble transferring them to the blog. I thought I would keep these answers here in case I do succeed in getting the picture puzzles up.

Answers to Picture Puzzles
1. Matanot la’evyonim (presents for the poor)
2. Shushan Ha-Birah (Shushan, the capital)
3. Achashverosh
4. Esther
5. Mishloach Manot (baskets of food delivered to friends)
6. Mordechai ben Yair ben Shimi ben Kish Ish Yemini (Mordechai’s full name)
7. Kinim , “lice,” from the Passover story
8. Etz, “tree,” the word used in the Megillah to refer to the gallows
9. Ka’asher Avadeti Avadeti, “If I am to perish, I am to perish” (What Esther says when she agrees to take the risk of approaching the king). Esther 4:16.
10. Mi hu zeh ve’ai zeh hu, “Who is he and where is he?” (What the king says when he hears from Esther that someone has plotted to kill Esther and her people). Esther 7:5.

Parashat Mishpatim: From Suffering to Empathy

2010-02-10T17:55:00.000-08:00

An article in the New York Times last week reported a case in Pakistan of a poor young girl who had come to work as a servant for a rich family and been cruelly treated to the point of death. This young girl and others like her have no one to aid them. They are at the mercy of their masters.

How can a society be created in which the powerful do not abuse the powerless? What is to stop those in power from treating with great cruelty those have no power, whether for reasons of poverty, class, gender, or race?

The Torah’s answer is empathy. The Torah’s answer is to create a nation that is born in a state of poverty, born as foreigners in a foreign land, as slaves to a cruel master. Such a nation knows injustice and suffering from the inside, and this knowledge serves as a constant reminder not to treat others with such cruelty.

It is no accident that this week’s parsha, Mishpatim, “Laws,” begins with laws to protect the debt slave from permanent bondage, spelling out his rights and those of the female maid-servant. The Israelites have just come from Egyptian bondage; their own unjust treatment must be turned to empathy; they must learn to be, like God, “freers” of slaves.

The Ibn Ezra argues that the central principle of many of the laws in Mishpatim is not to mistreat those who have less power. In addition to these slavery laws, there are also laws concerning the treatment of the ger, the “stranger,” as well as the poor person, the widow, the orphan and one’s animals. The Torah is particularly elaborate here and elsewhere concerning the protection of the ger. According to the Talmud (Baba Metzia 59b) the Torah contains 36 injunctions (or according to some, 46) concerning the ger!

The Torah explicitly says that one may not harm a ger “because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt,” and because “you know the nefesh hager, the soul of the stranger.” You know in a very intimate way what it feels like to be treated as an outsider; remember that feeling when you come to deal with others who are now outsiders. The root of justice is our own experience of injustice. The root of compassion is the memory of our own pain.

Rashi adds another twist to this idea of empathy. Based on the midrash Mekhilta, he says that we must not tease or belittle the ger because he can easily turn around and say the same thing to us: “You are also a descendant of foreigners.” We are all outsiders in one way or another. Remembering this truth about ourselves keeps us humble enough to be welcoming and not hurtful to other outsiders.

As a people, the Jews have seen much suffering. As individuals each of us has had his or her own measure of trouble -- some more, some less. We also watch our children suffer the (mostly small) pains of life. The challenge is to turn such troubles into opportunities for growth, for growth in empathy and understanding of others’ pain. Upon leaving Egypt, the Israelites are called to precisely this task of turning suffering into empathy.

Parashat Yitro: Still Standing Still at Sinai

2010-02-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

Last week the Israelites were on the move, travelling through the Red Sea and on through the desert. As the Hasidic master Sefat Emet points out, the human being is a mahalakh, “a walker.” We are in constant motion, striving for improvement by moving from one step to the next.

This week’s parsha, though, does not deal with movement, but with standing still. The experience at Mount Sinai is known as a ma’amad, “a stand.” Deuteronomy, in referring to this incident, says yom asher amadeta, “The day on which you stood” (4:10), and here, in Exodus, the Torah uses a different root with the same meaning, Vayityatzvu, “They stood at the foot of the mountain” (19:17). If anything, this second root, yatzav, also the root for the word matzevah, “statue,” has an even more fixed feel to it. While the people at the Sea are mobile like the sea, here at Mount Sinai, the people stand still and grounded like the mountain itself.

What does this emphasis on standing mean? The Sefat Emet says that at Mount Sinai we were like angels, and angels are known to be standers, not movers. At Mount Sinai, we were like them, perfect and complete, with no need to climb any further steps.

For one brief moment at Sinai, we experienced the divine presence; we heard God say Anokhi, “I am the Lord your God,” and understood that such an awareness of divinity is the aim of our whole existence. For one brief moment, we escaped the human struggle forward to become, and were part of an eternal Being. We were present, not worried about past or future.

We are always trying to return to Mount Sinai, to that experience of total presence and total being. The Amidah prayer offers one such opportunity as in it we literally stand like angels – with our feet together – and attempt to concentrate on something other than our workday obligations and responsibilities.

Shabbat offers another such opportunity, as on Shabbat we stop our weekday work of becoming and concentrate just on being. It isn’t easy. Concerning the Shabbat commandment in this week’s parsha, the Torah says, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work” (20:8). The midrash Mekhilta comments: “Is it possible for a human being to do all of his work in six days? Rather, rest as if all your work is done.” Humans are not angels; we can and should be out walking, working and changing. At the same time, though, every once in a while, we need to take a moment to stand still and be present, not because our work is done – it never really is -- but in order to rekindle the feeling of total divine Presence we had at Sinai.

Parashat Beshalah: On Walls and Paths

2010-01-27T07:22:00.000-08:00

Vehamayim lahem homah miyeminam umismolam. “The water was a wall for them to their right and to their left.” That is how the experience of crossing the Red Sea is described in this week’s parsha. This line is repeated twice, once at the start of the narrative and once at its end (14:22 and 29), as if to give the reader the same feeling of being enveloped and surrounded as the Israelites in the Sea.

What exactly is that feeling? A homah, a wall, is a symbol of protection and security. Walls were used to surround cities and keep out enemies. Here the water walls serve to protect the Israelites from their Egyptian enemy, and also from whatever killing forces are destroying the Egyptians.

But the wall of water is not just about divine protection, but also about divine guidance. The wall is said to be “to their right and to their left,” creating a clear derekh, a path. The Israelites are being taught to walk the straight and narrow, not to veer either to the left or the right.

Protection and guidance are intertwined throughout these stories. The parsha begins with a description of the divine cloud which guides the people on their derekh through the desert. Upon the arrival of the attacking Egyptians, this same divine cloud then serves a protective role, standing between the Israelites and the Egyptians. And, in the stories about water and manna which follow the Red Sea incident, God offers the people protection against the hunger and thirst of the desert, but only if they learn to carefully follow His instructions and His Torah.

The intertwining of the themes of protection and guidance has an important theological implication; it means that it is not God alone who is responsible for our protection and salvation, but that He has given us a way, the Torah, to protect and save ourselves.

The midrash Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael says as much in its interpretation of the water walls at the Red Sea. It wasn’t the water, says the midrash, that protected the Israelites. In fact, the waters were filled with anger, heimah (a play on homah, wall) at the Israelites and refused to protect them. What was it that finally caused them to be saved? Miyemanam umismolam. Things to their right and to their left, which, according to one opinion means the mezuzah which is placed on the right side of the door and the tefillin which are placed on one’s left arm, and, according to another opinion, means the Torah, on the one hand, and Tefillah, prayer, on the other. In other words, the Torah and mitzvot we surround ourselves with are the true source of our strength and protection.

Today our water does not stand for us as a wall. Our water is flexible and mobile, running in all directions so that we are uncertain what to do and how to live. We are not granted the clarity of a split Sea experience with walls on either side of us to protect and guide us. We no longer have the physical derekh clearly marked, but we have a long tradition of a spiritual derekh, a path that was first forged at the Sea. We have a long tradition of a way to live, and we have the Song that was first sung at the Sea, a song that can carry us back -- its sound surrounding us like walls of water -- and make us feel the sense of peace, security and clarity of direction the Israelites once experienced at the Sea.

Parashat Bo: On Time

2010-01-20T17:33:00.000-08:00

In this week’s parsha we find, for the first time, not just stories, but commandments -- many, many commandments, mostly concerning the paschal sacrifice and future Passover celebrations (chapters 12-13). The first of these commandments concerns the marking of the month of Nisan, the month in which the Israelites left Egypt, as the first month of the year. The first commandment to the Jewish people, in other words, concerns the control of time. Why?

For 2, 448 years, says Rabbi Simon in the midrash Pesikta deRav Kahana, the calendar was God’s job. It was God who kept track of the months and the new moons. Now, with the exodus from Egypt, the job is being passed on to the people of Israel. The midrash compares it to a king who has many storage-houses and keys to each one. When his child comes of age, he hands the keys over to his child. The midrash also compares it to a carpenter or a doctor who passes on his bag of special tools when his child comes of age.

Jewish time centers around two big events, creation and the exodus from Egypt. During creation, God created light and dark to demarcate day and night, and then the special Sabbath day. These times are built in to the fabric of the universe, eternally God’s to control. With the exodus from Egypt, though, God passed on to humans some role in time-keeping, the keeping of the lunar year, with all its holidays, and the responsibility of ensuring that Passover, the center-piece of that holiday calendar, always falls out in the spring. Indeed, the responsibility for the holiday calendar is considered so entirely in human hands that stories are told about God looking down to earth to find out from us exactly when a certain holiday falls!

This time-keeping is the bag of tools or the set of keys that God has passed on to us. It gives us a chance to be partners with God in the running of the universe’s time. It gives us a chance to participate in God’s time, in eternal time, a chance to escape the finitude of our own mortal existence by being part of a system of time that endures.

Enduring is the whole point of this new lunar calendar. The Torah uses the term hukat olam, “an eternal institution” (12:14) for the first time here, in connection to the yearly celebration of Passover. Through such annual commemorations, we escape our individual temporariness and become part of an eternal history, part of the past event of the exodus itself but also part of its past, present and future commemorations. We become, momentarily, like God, eternal.

The alternative is to be enslaved. Part of the reason God chooses this time commandment as the first for the new Jewish people is that they need it to escape the mentality of slavery, a mentality in which someone else controls their time.

But the danger of enslavement is not limited to Egypt or to actual bondage. Time itself has a way of enslaving us, as we rush to accomplish everything we can in our limited time. That first mitzvah, then, the mitzvah to keep track of months in a divinely ordained way, is partly a way to escape such enslavement, a way to elevate our concern with time, to create and participate in a kind of time that is not finite, but eternal.

Parashat Vaera: On the Ability to Hear

2010-01-13T18:01:00.000-08:00

In the beginning of this week’s parsha, Moshe tells the people that God will redeem them. But they can’t hear it. Velo shamu el Moshe mikotzer ru’ah ume’aovodah kashah. “They did not listen to Moshe because of a shortness of spirit (or breath) caused by hard work” (6:9).

Pharaoh can’t hear Moshe either; the Torah tells us numerous times that velo shama aleihem, “He [Pharaoh] did not listen to them [Moshe and Aharon].” And so, what God does for these hard-of-hearing folk is to invent a new method of communication, one based not on the subtleties of words but on the clearer medium of the ot, the “sign,” a physical visual event which defies the ordinary laws of nature. To such otot, both the people of Israel and Pharaoh will at least eventually listen.

The fact is that in last week’s parsha, the people did listen when Moshe and Aharon reported God’s promises. The difference is that there Moshe and Aharon not only spoke, but also performed some otot , turning the staff into a snake, making a hand leprous and then healed again, and turning water into blood. There, the people listened, but here in our parsha, when Moshe tries to just report God’s words, without the aid of signs, the people cannot hear him.

And so, the redemption will come about not through words, God decides, but through many, many otot, all the wonders of the 10 plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea.

Such miracles and wonders are a new mode of communication for God. God did not communicate in this way with the avot, the patriarchs Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov. For them, simple words and promises were enough, and they believed. They were able to hear the words and find in their lives the subtle signs of God’s special care and protection. Nachmanides says that this difference is what is meant by the strange reference at the beginning of this parsha to God’s appearance to the patriarchs using one name, El Shaddai, and His current appearance to Moshe and the Israelites using a different name, the tetragrammaton. The change in names symbolizes a change in method of communication, from words and subtle signs within nature to miracles.

The change is not an entirely happy one. The midrash reports that God says to Moshe concerning the patriarchs and their trusting ways: haval al de’avdin vela mishtakhin. “It is a shame about those who are gone and no longer here.”

The change is a sad one, but not a permanent one. This new miraculous mode of communication is only a temporary tool to break the Israelites out of the blocked hearing they have developed in the course of their bondage. The ultimate goal is to open up the people’s ears to subtler modes of hearing God’s presence in the world. Listening, after all, is what they must do at Mount Sinai (although there, too, God aids their listening with some spectacular sound and light effects). No wonder tradition counts it as a great stride forward that they are now able to say, na’aseh vinishma, “We will do and we will listen!”

What about us? Where do we stand in this spectrum? Can we hear God’s words? Can we hear and see His presence in the world like the patriarchs did? Or our ears closed like the Israelites in Egypt, closed up from the stress of too much hard work? Such stress gives us kotzer ru’ah, shortness of breath and of spirit, so that we lose the peace of mind that is required to really hear one another and God, to really see the redemptive moments and opportunities that present themselves.

We don’t have the option of otot from God, and so we must learn to listen more subtly. The Hasidic master Sefat Emet says that ever since Mount Sinai, the divine voice has never ceased, and that it is our permanent task now to open ourselves to hearing it, as we declare each day with the Shma, the call to “hear.” Before we recite the Shma, though, he points out, we must first leave Egypt, first leave behind the life and work stresses that close up our ears to the subtle sounds of redemption.

Parashat Shemot: On the Human Role in Redemption

2010-01-06T18:29:00.000-08:00

The book of Exodus tells the story of God’s redemption of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. But the story of redemption does not begin with God. It begins with human beings taking courageous action. God does not act until he sees that human beings care.

The first human beings to care are women. The midwives Shifrah and Puah, in an incredible act of bravery, defy Pharaoh’s order to kill newborn Israelite males. This is the first act of Israelite resistance, and it sets the stage for a growing movement of compassion and bravery.

The story of the saving of a specific Israelite baby, Moshe, comes next, and here, too women are at the center, three women who perform three quiet, private acts of redemption. His mother, acting against Pharaoh’s orders, bravely hides him and then carefully sets him out in a basket on the Nile. His sister stands watch, on the look-out to be of assistance when the moment is right. The daughter of Pharaoh sees him, hears his cries, and takes pity on him, adopting him as her own. The bravery, compassion and caring in all three are remarkable. Building on the movement begun by Shifrah and Puah’s act of passive resistance in refusing to kill babies, these women are actively involved in protecting the life of this one endangered baby, Moshe, and raising him into adulthood.

Moshe’s personality is formed by the acts of these women. Just as the Torah tells us of three actions done on Moshe’s behalf as a young child, the Torah also tells us of three actions he himself takes upon growing up. First, he steps out of his comfortable castle life to “see” the suffering of his brethren (vayar bisivlotam), and seeing (vayar, again) an Egyptian hitting an Israelite, kills the Egyptian (2:11). Like his sister, he has become a person who looks out for the welfare of his brethren. And like his two mothers, he has become one who views the suffering of others with great compassion, and has the bravery to defy authority. The second story has Moshe trying to break up a fight between two Israelites, and the third tells of his rescue of 7 maidens in distress at the well in Midian. This third story again displays the characteristics of courage, compassion and caring he learned from his own rescuers.

But Moshe does not just repeat what he has learned. He builds upon it, taking the resistance movement one step further. He doesn’t just act to protect and rescue the person in distress, but he also actively tries to fight the aggressor, killing the Egyptian, rebuking the fighting Israelite, and chasing away the harassing shepherds at the well. He does not just save, but fights and judges.

At this point, the resistance movement has gone as far as it can go in human hands. Moshe understands the need to translate compassion and bravery into fighting terms, but when he does so, he is threatened with death and must run away to preserve his life. God must enter the fight. And so He does in the many chapters and 10 plagues which follow.

But we should remember that the story did not start with God. Yes, the Torah tells us that God heard the people’s cries and “saw” (vayar) their pain, but He is not the first to have done so (2:25). The daughter of Pharaoh is the first to have heeded an Israelite cry, and Moshe is the first to have “seen” their suffering. In a way, God’s compassion and caring are drawn down to earth by these human actions, and His will to redeem is provoked by these signals of a ready human partnership in the project of redemption.

Some Loose Ends on the Relationship Between the Two Sets of Three Stories:

I noted above that the Torah tells us of three actions done by three women in preserving the life of the young Moshe, and then of three actions done by Moshe as a grown up. I am trying to think through the parallels between these two sets of three. Here is what I have come up with. Please feel free to add your own ideas as a comment:

1. The two first actions both involve hiding. Yocheved, Moshe’s mother, hides him. Moshe hides the Egyptian he has killed.
2. The two second actions both involve an activity among peers or brethren, though in opposite attitudes. Miriam, Moshe’s sister, stands guard for her brother. The two Israelites fight. Also, the word used for Miriam’s standing, vatetatzev, sounds somewhat similar to the word used for the Israelites’ fighting, nitzim.
3. In both the third cases the one(s) being rescued are unrelated to the rescuer. They are foreigners or strangers, and the act of salvation is done despite this distance. The daughter of Pharaoh saves Moshe, an Israelite, and Moshe, an Israelite raised by an Egyptian, saves the 7 Midianites. The midrash makes a big deal out of the daughter of Pharaoh’s action for this reason, calling her Bityah or Batyah, “daughter of God” because God says, “Since you called Moshe your son, I will call you My daughter.” Also, both rescues take place alongside a body of water.

Parashat Vayigash: On Rapprochements and Scarcity

2009-12-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

This parsha is about the coming together of Yaakov’s family, its rapprochement and reunification. This is the first family in the book of Genesis who does come together in this way. Cain kills Abel, Yitzhak and Yishmael are estranged from one another, and Yaakov and Esav, while meeting and making peace, ultimately each go their separate ways. But with the children of Yaakov is born the nation; all of his sons are our ancestors, and so they must come together, must be permanently reunited.

The parsha is called Vayigash for good reason. Vayigash means “And he approached.” The verse refers to Yehudah, but everyone does some approaching and meeting in this parsha. Four separate meetings take place – that of Yosef and his brothers, Yosef and his father, Pharaoh and the brothers and Pharaoh and the father. That’s why they live in “Goshen,” the place of approaching or coming together. Yosef uses the same words to coax his brothers to come toward him after his frightening revelation of his identity, geshu na elay, “Come towards me.” Coming together is the name of the game.

What strikes me about all this coming together is that it is driven by scarcity. There is the scarcity of food all around them, the great 7-year famine which physically drives the brothers to go down to Egypt first once and then a second time, ultimately leading to their reunification with their brother.

And then there is another type of scarcity, a sense in which time feels scarce, especially the time left in Yaakov’s life. It is this worry over his father’s approaching death that drives Yosef’s revelation to his brothers. He hears Yehudah speak of his father’s death, of how likely it is that his father will die from grief if Binyamin does not return (44:31), and Yosef is scared. All along, he’d been asking about the health of his father and heard it was fine (“shalom,” 43:28), but now, when he hears death might be around the corner, he realizes he must reveal himself immediately; there is no time to waste. “I am Yosef,” he says, “Is my father still alive (45:3)?” In other words, wait. Hold on. Can I still stop the story early enough to change the ending, to keep my father alive right now so I can still see him and he me before he dies? Hurry, hurry, he says to his brothers. Bring my father to me right away.

There is a deep lesson here. We most appreciate our loved ones when we are faced with the prospect of losing one another. Whoever has had a child come close to death and escape it, feels forever the gift of that child’s life in a different way. The trick is to remember that death is eventually the end for us all, so that life is always scarce, not just at the end. We should love and hunger for each other, desire such “Goshen” meetings, like we would hunger for scarce food in a famine. Part of what makes this parsha such a tear-jerker (Yosef himself cries 4 times) is our sense of regret, of the loss of all those years the family spent apart. They needed that time and that suffering to learn some lessons, but perhaps we can learn them just by reading their story.

Parashat Miketz: Seeing God in the Dreidl

2009-12-16T08:17:00.000-08:00

The dreidl spins and spins, like the world around us. Sometimes we land on a “gimmel” or a “heh,” and sometimes we land on a “nun” or a “shin.” Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.

The funny thing about the dreidl is that, like the lots of Purim, it makes it seem like everything has to do with luck. But at the same time, the message of its letters is otherwise: Nes Gadol Hayah Sham. “A great miracle happened there.” Miracles imply divine control, that there is some order or purpose in the universe, not just dumb luck.

Yosef’s story is similar. He starts out on top, a beloved son, adored by his father, with dreams of grandeur, but then he gets pushed down and down some more. He is thrown down into a pit, “brought down” to Egypt as a slave, and sent further down into the “pit” of jail. Finally, in this week’s parsha, his “luck” turns again, and he rises quickly to the position of second to the king, riding high through the streets in a chariot.

Is that all Yosef’s story is? A story of good and bad luck, like the randomly spinning dreidl?

Yosef himself thinks not. His skill is to interpret dreams and also to interpret life. What he sees in these dreams is always a plan. At first, in his own dream, he imagines that he himself is the mover of this plan, the center of the universe. As a slave in Egypt, he learns otherwise, so that when he comes to interpret the baker and the cup-bearer’s dreams, he sees king Pharaoh as the planner, the one who has the power to either impale or re-instate his servants. Finally, in this week’s parsha, Yosef comes to terms with the true Planner, the real King, the Master of the Universe. What do Pharaoh’s dreams of fat and skinny cows and grain mean, according to Yosef? They mean that God has a plan and that God has revealed this plan to Pharaoh. And what do Yosef’s own ups and downs mean? Yes, he tells his brothers, you meant evil when you sold me, but see, it was all part of a divine plan to feed people.

Yosef lives in the same kind of world we do. Bad things happen, good things happen, and it all seems random. God no longer speaks directly to Yosef as he did to his ancestors, and there are no clear miracles. Yosef is the first of the patriarchs to have children without divine intervention.

In such a world, to be great is not to converse with God, not to hear God’s voice or to speak His words, but to be able to read God’s presence in the world as it is, to be a Tzafnat Paneah, “an interpreter of hidden things,” as Yosef is called in Egypt. Yosef’s ability to do this -- his ability to see in Pharaoh’s dream the marks of a divine plan -- is the key to his success. It is only when Yosef learns to speak, not of his own dreams of greatness, but of God’s plan, that he can become great. Being great in this kind of seemingly random world involves the ability to read the words: Nes Gadol Hayah Sham on the swirling dreidl of life.

This essay was inspired by the story “Right Side Up” by Barbara Diamond Goldin and by a shiur given last shabbat by Joel Linsider at Congregation Beth Abraham-Jacob.

An Extra Thought on Numbers and Yosef’s Dreams:

There are 3 sets of dreams in the Yosef narrative. In both the second and third set, the numbers in the dreams correspond, according to Yosef, to time elements. The 3 branches of the vine in the cup-bearer’s dream and the 3 baskets in the baker’s dream each correspond to 3 days. In Pharaoh’s dreams, the 7 cows, skinny and fat, and the 7 ears of grain, skinny and fat, all correspond to 7 years.

What about the first set of dreams, Yosef’s own? There is no number given in the first of his dreams (though it refers to his brothers’ sheaves of wheat, apparently 11), but in the second he says that the sun, the moon and 11 stars will come and bow down to him. On one level, the dream clearly refers to his father and mother (although dead at the time) and 11 brothers. But what if we also apply the time/number interpretation to this dream? What do we come up with?

1 sun + 1 moon + 11 stars = 13. The Torah does not often tell us its protagonists’ ages, but it tells us that when Yosef had this dream he was 17 years old (37:2) and that when he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams and thereby became a vice-roy with many people bowing down to him, he was 30 years old (41:46). 30 – 17 = 13. The celestial elements in Yosef’s dream would then correspond to the number of years until his dream was to be fulfilled.

(What about the number 11? Yosef’s first dream involves 11 sheaves of wheat, though they are not numbered there, and in the second dream the number 11 stands out. But why 11, if, as we have just seen, it was 13 years until Yosef’s dreams were fulfilled? The Torah emphasizes that Pharaoh had his dreams “after 2 years.” Based on this strange detail, the rabbis say that Pharaoh was actually supposed to dream his dream 2 years earlier but that God postponed the event as a punishment to Yosef for trying to get the cup-bearer to help him get out of jail instead of relying on God. Perhaps then Yosef’s dreams of 11 sheaves and 11 stars refer to the 11 year time-frame after which he was supposed to have his dream fulfilled? The original plan was 11 years so the dream had 11 stars. The addtion of the sun and the moon turns the number to 13, corresponding to the actual number of years it took.)

Some Chanukah Thoughts

2009-12-09T18:18:00.000-08:00

This year, the first and the last nights of Chanukah fall on Friday night. Twice we will be lighting double candles, those for Chanukah and those for Shabbat.

Chanukah candles are not like Shabbat candles. Shabbat candles are for use, for oneg, “pleasure,” to provide light to sit and eat by on Friday night. Chanukah candles, on the other hand, may not be used at all. V’eyn lekha reshut lehishtamesh bahem ela lirotam belvad. “You do not have permission to use them but only to look upon them.” If you want light to eat or read by, light another lamp as well. These candles are not ordinary lights; they are kadosh, holy.

This law about the use of candles expresses a basic theme of Chanukah – its emphasis on what is out of the ordinary, the supernatural, the miraculous. Shabbat celebrates the creation of the natural world in 7 days, but Chanukah has 8 days. It moves on into the realm of the supernatural -- the realm of the nes, the miracle.

Chief among such miracles is the very existence of our nation. On Chanukah we celebrate the ability of our nation to have survived a war with the Syrian Greek army against all odds. Rabim beyad me’atim. They were mighty and numerous and we were few and weak. By the normal order of things, we should have been defeated, defeated then, and defeated again in the many persecutions that preceded and followed Chanukah (see the Maoz Tzur song). That we weren’t defeated, that we are still hanging on, is indeed a miracle.

This survival theme is also the meaning of the oil story, the story of the jug of oil which should have lasted only one day but ended up lasting eight. We are the flame lit by that jug of oil, surviving and burning for all these years beyond all reasonable expectations. And the reason our flame keeps burning, the reason we survive, is that our jug of oil, the Torah, will never run out. We are fueled by the Torah, fueled by precisely this kind of story. You see, the story is actually speaking about itself, about its own future, its own tenacity to live and keep burning in us.

For here we are, not just alive, but lighting Chanukah candles, carrying on an ancient tradition. The Hebrew word nes means both “miracle” and “sign-post.” When we light candles, we are simultaneously commemorating a miracle of the past and creating a sign-post for the present and the future, a sign-post of our commitment to this memory, our heritage. While we are busy marking a miracle of the past, we are also creating a miracle in the present, the miracle of the past’s survival in ourselves and our children.

On Shabbat we thank God for creating the world with all its physical lights -- its sun and its moon and its stars. On Chanukah we thank God for the miracle of another kind of light, for the miracle of a light which burns within us and can never be extinguished.

Parashat Vayishlah: Yaakov's Transformation

2009-12-03T07:20:00.000-08:00

People are often bothered by the unseemly deeds of our ancestors, especially those of Yaakov, the trickster. What kind of role-model is he for us and for our children?

Actually, a very good role model. Not because of who he is, but because of who he works to become, because of how he changes and grows over time.

Yaakov transforms himself from a Yaakov to a Yisrael. He first receives this name change as a blessing from the angel with whom he fights. As Rashi points out, the name change is fitting because it is the first blessing Yaakov earns through an open, direct confrontation (related to the word Yisrael) rather than through deception and crookedness (related to the word Yaakov). He has fought the angel face to face as opposed to hiding behind the skin of his brother, fooling his father into giving him his brother’s blessing.

A new face-to-face kind of openness is at the heart of Yaakov’s, or rather, Yisrael’s, new way of being, as the Torah makes clear through the repeated use of the word panim, “face,” in this story. Yaakov calls the place Peniel because of this face to face – panim el panim – encounter with the angel. And his encounter with Esav is also described in these open terms. What he hopes for ahead of time is to see Esav’s face, and to win his forgiveness and favor, all three of which are described using the term panim (32:21). And, when he does actually meet Esav, Yaakov describes the encounter as fulfilling exactly this panim goal – “To see your face is like seeing the face of God” (33:10).

Yaakov has been in many situations in which faces could not be openly seen. He was born holding on to his brother’s heel, not seeing his face. Later, when it came to blessings, his father, in his blindness, could not see his sons’ faces, relying instead, mistakenly, on the feel of their arms as he blessed the wrong son. And Yaakov himself could not see the face of his bride when, in the darkness of night, he was given Leah instead of Rachel. Yaakov wants out of this cycle of darkness and trickery. It is time for night to end and the honesty of daylight to shine forth.

And so it does. When Yaakov runs away from Esav in the beginning of last week’s parsha, the Torah tells us the sun was setting (28:11), but here, when Yaakov returns, ready for an open-faced encounter with his brother, the verse instead reads: Vayizrah lo hashemesh, “And the sun rose for him (32:32)” A new day has dawned for Yaakov/Yisrael, one which is to be bright with honesty rather than dark with hiding and trickery.

Yaakov is not perfect. He is, like us, a struggler, a striver. And in that sense, he is a perfect role model, a perfect father for our people, as he models not a particular personality trait or great deed but a process, the process and the promise of personal growth and transformation.

Parashat Vayetze: In Place of God

2009-11-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

Another parsha, another barren woman, and another interaction between husband and wife over the problem.

Rahel complains to Yaakov of her situation, saying, “Give me children, or else I’ll die” (30:1). She is clearly an emotional wreck. What is Yaakov’s reaction? Anger. He says: Hatahat Elokim anokhi? “Can I take the place of God who has denied you fruit of the womb?” I’m not God; I can’t solve the problem. What do you want me to do?

The midrash (Breishit Rabbah 71.7) compares this reaction to the Job verse, “Does a wise man answer with windy opinions, and fill his belly with the east wind (15:2),” i.e. with anger? Such a reaction is not appropriate for Yaakov. According to the midrash, God says to him: Is this how one answers those in distress?

And what is the proper response to those in distress? Learn from God. Sometimes He fixes the problem, but other times, He merely comes and says, “Don’t be scared. I am with you. All will be well.” (See for instance Genesis 15:1, 26:24, 28:15 and 46:3). The answer to Yaakov’s question is: Yes! You are in fact in place of God, not in terms of fixing the problem – it’s true, that is out of your reach – but in terms of being a sympathetic, comforting presence for your wife. When Cain asked God, hashomer ahi anokhi, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” he assumed the answer was no, but the reader knows the answer is yes. Yes, we are all our brothers’ keepers, and yes, we are all in place of God for one another.

Yaakov fails here. Perhaps he has too much work stress in dealing with the tricky Lavan. But not to worry. There is a tikkun (literally, “a repair”) for this lack of sympathy, a time when things will get repaired and redeemed. At the end of the book of Genesis, after Yaakov dies, the brothers come to Yosef, worried that Yosef will now wreak vengeance on them for selling him down to Egypt. But no. Yosef uses Yaakov’s words, but, as Nehama Leibowitz points out, in a new sympathetic twist: “Have no fear! Am I a substitute for God?” Hatahat Elokim ani? (50:19). I will not judge you and punish you for I am merely a human; such judgments are for God to make.

Sometimes it is appropriate to take the place of God and sometimes it is not. Yosef, in his kindness, knew when not to, had learned not to put himself above his brothers in that way. Yaakov, in his anger, did not understand that it is precisely in moments of distress for those we care about that we are given the ability to take the place of God, to offer the solace of our company and sympathy.

Parashat Toldot: Yitzhak as the Good Husband

2009-11-18T17:08:00.000-08:00

Avraham had many admirable characteristics, but he was not always the most attentive husband. His son, Yitzhak, on the other hand, now he was a good husband.

Yitzhak’s response to Rivkah’s barrenness was quite different from Avraham’s response to Sarah’s. Yitzhak prays for her. What a novel concept! Avraham spends a parsha and a half waiting for a child from Sarah but he never actually asks God to grant her one. He prays for the Sodomites but not for his wife. He is happy to accept a concubine in her place, and seems satisfied with the child born of that consummation, not worrying that Sarah still has no child.

Not so Yitzhak. Yitzhak pleads with God, standing opposite Rivkah – lenokhah ishto, literally “in the presence of his wife,” praying on her behalf, and keeping her ever-“present” in his thoughts (25:21). The midrash says that Yitzhak and Rivkah each stood in opposite corners of a room and said to God: “Master of the Universe, please, I only want to have a child together with this spouse.” A concubine is simply not an option.

Avraham was never officially rebuked for his inattentiveness to his wife, but I wonder if there isn’t a hint of a rebuke in the angels’ words to him: Ayeh Sarah ishtekha, “Where is Sarah, your wife?” This word, ayeh, “where,” after all, has a history of rebuke. After the sin of the Garden of Eden, God says to the hiding Adam, Ayeka, “Where are you?” and after Cain kills Abel, God again says, Ay hevel ahikha, “Where is Abel, your brother?” In both these situations, of course, God knows full well the person’s physical location. The question is rather one of responsibility. Where is this person whom you are responsible for? So, too, with the angels and Avraham. “Where is Sarah your wife?” She is your wife; why isn’t she more present for you?

God responds in kind to each of the patriarchs, mirroring their concerns. He engages Avraham in a discussion about the justice of killing the Sodomites. But since Avraham doesn’t show he cares that much about having a child from Sarah – Ishmael seems enough-- God grants him only one, after a long wait, and then threatens to take that child away.

Yitzhak, on the other hand, standing as he does lenokhah ishto, with his wife totally present for him, receives from God two children from that beloved wife in short order. The Torah actually uses the same word for Yitzhak’s pleading and for God’s responding, Vayetar and Vaye’ater. God mirrors Yitzhak’s concerns, joining him in his efforts. The midrash compares the situation to a father and son who are each digging their way toward each other from opposite ends of a tunnel. Yitzhak has chosen to stand together with Rivkah, and so God chooses to stand with Yitzhak in that endeavor. We often wonder: Does God answer our prayers? We see from Yitzhak that God’s response depends on our own attitudes, that God mirrors our own deeds of caring in this world.

Parashat Hayei-Sarah: Avraham's Legacy

2009-11-11T18:11:00.000-08:00

Avraham and Sarah are remarkable individuals. But what happens when they die? This week’s parsha deals with their deaths, Sarah at the start of the parsha and Avraham at the end. And the lesson of this week’s parsha is this: Their legacy continues. Avraham and Sarah were not just good individuals doing good things in the world, on their own. They had an impact on those around them, planting the seeds for a tradition which continued after their deaths, which, indeed, continues to this day.

Oddly, this lesson is seen through an otherwise insignificant character, the servant of Avraham. The parsha spends an inordinate amount of time dealing with his words and actions in the pursuit of a proper wife for Isaac. Why? Because refracted through this simple servant’s words we are able to see more clearly the legacy of Avraham, able to see which lessons leave the most lasting impression.

Unlike Avraham, who has the restraint and dignity to speak with great sparseness, as in the simple hineni, “I am here,” this servant of Avraham has an unrefined, verbose way of speaking. And it is through this funny talkative voice that we can hear clearly the lessons Avraham leaves behind.

The servant’s words highlight two such lessons, faith in God and hesed, acts of loving-kindness. Like Avraham, this servant believes and trusts in God, and thinks of himself as part of a God-driven mission to find a proper wife for Isaac. Perhaps he takes the lesson simplistically to an extreme, making a deal with God to help him find the right wife for Isaac. But underlying this simplicity is the basic understanding that God controls all events, and he should put his trust in God. He bows low multiple times in thanks to God for helping him on his quest. And, like Avraham, he rushes around with great eagerness to fulfill his part in the divine plan.

Second, the servant has learned from Avraham and Sarah the great value of extending oneself in care for others, whether through hospitality or through beseeching God to show compassion on others. The servant chooses the young woman who graciously offers water to him and also to his camels because he has learned from his master that the mark of class is not in a person’s dress or appearance or wealth, but in her acts of loving-kindness toward others.

These two lessons, faith and hesed, are the legacy of Avraham and Sarah. Avraham and Sarah will die this week, but their legacy will live on. Why? Because they have not been lone individuals seeking good in the world, but have tried to create a community of people doing so, tried to influence others. One noticeable difference between Avraham’s and Lot’s hospitality last week is that Avraham gets other members of his household to participate as well, whereas Lot goes it alone. Going it alone is not the Torah’s way, not a way to create a tradition, a legacy, to build a people. Avraham’s servant’s actions are testament to the wide influence Avraham had on others. Though Avraham dies, his influence lives on.

Parashat Vayera: On Visitors and Hosts

2009-11-04T17:24:00.000-08:00

Avraham’s hospitality is legendary. If you want to know how to do the mitzvah of hakhnasat orhim, learn from Avraham. He runs with eagerness and excitement toward three passers-by. He asks them to stay in a way that makes it seem like they are doing him a favor, and he (and his family) cook them an elaborate meal, much more than he had even promised. He then stands at attention, serving them, while they sit and enjoy.

But the story doesn’t start there. The parsha doesn’t start with Avraham and his hospitality. It starts with God. Vayera elav hashem. “And God appeared to him.”

Why does it start with this divine appearance? Because Avraham learned his kindness toward others from his relationship with God. God, too, was involved in a mitzvah that day, according to the midrash. Through His appearance to Avraham that day, God was doing bikur holim, visiting the sick, because Avraham was recovering from his circumcision (an event that happened in the immediately preceding verses, at the end of last week’s parsha).

So God was visiting the sick and Avraham was welcoming guests! How beautiful. The two mitzvot, the two good deeds, are mirror images of one another. In one it is the act of visiting which is the good deed, and in the other, it is the act of receiving visitors that is the good deed. How could both receiving visitors and being a visitor be acts of kindness? They are both acts of kindness when they are done in a way that focuses not on one’s own needs but on the needs of the other, either the needs of the sick other or the needs of the temporarily homeless traveling other. Taken together, the two mitzvot create a circle of care.

Avraham’s hospitality did not exist in a vacuum. It was part of a reciprocal relationship he had developed with God. You visit. I’ll receive guests. The sages say that mitzvah goreret mitzvah. One mitzvah leads to another. Usually that phrase is understood to refer to a single person’s actions. Once you start doing one good deed, it will lead you yourself to do another. But it is also true that there is a cycle of goodness in the world as a whole, that one person’s good deeds lead to another’s good deeds. Perhaps this explains why Lot could not exist in Sodom as a single person doing the good deed of hospitality -- because good deeds need to be done in a place where they can be returned and reinforced, where care and concern are reciprocated. Avraham and God together began such a cycle of goodness in the world.

Parashat Lekh-Lekha: Avraham's New Perspective

2009-10-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

Veheyeh Berachah. “And you shall be a blessing.” (Genesis 12:2). This is one of the things God promises Avra(ha)m if he takes the journey God commands. What does it mean to be a blessing? A midrash, cited by Rashi, says it refers to the first blessing of the amidah prayer, which ends with Avraham’s name, magen Avraham. Avraham literally became a brachah, a blessing for people to recite.

What does this midrash really mean? A closer look at the nature of Avraham’s journey will shed some light on it.

God commands Avraham to take a journey from his homeland and his father’s house to a land that He, God, will show him. If God was referring merely to a physical journey from point A to point B, surely He would have made those points explicit and said something like: Go from Haran to the land of Canaan.

The way God did state the command makes those physical points unclear. The commentaries in fact argue about whether Avraham’s homeland refers to Haran, where he resided at the time, or Ur Casdim, where he originally came from.

Moreover, why would God command a journey which Avraham was already in the middle of taking in any case? His father had set out with him from Ur Casdim toward the land of Canaan, and stopped at Haran. If God merely wanted Avraham to continue the journey his father had started, what would be so special or difficult about this command?

There is something more to God’s command than a physical journey. God is also commanding a spiritual journey, a movement not just from point A to point B, but also from perspective A to perspective B, from the culture and perspective of his father’s home to the culture and perspective of God. “To the land that I will show you” (12:1). Come, take the same journey your father suggested, but take it with a different set of eyes. Come to the land as I will show it to you. See it through My eyes, and not through the eyes of your family.

Lot, Avraham’s nephew, represents the perspective of Avraham’s family. When Lot is choosing where to reside within the land, he is said to “lift up his eyes and look” over the Jordan plain and see its richness and fertility. He moves into Sodom, one of the plain’s wealthy cities. Does he give a thought to the evil character of the people living there? Or to the longevity of the place, a place embroiled in years of conflict with some neighboring states? No. Lot sees wealth and follows it. Laban, Avraham’s grand-nephew, whom we will meet in a few parshiyot, is similarly characterized as being obsessed with wealth, greeting each newcomer with an eye on their jewels. Apparently, the Torah considers this greed to be a family trait.

So it is this greed, this exclusive focus on physical wealth, which Avraham is commanded to leave behind, to separate from. Indeed, the Torah makes a point of saying that it is “after Lot parted from him” (13:14), that God first spoke at length to Avraham about the land, saying that Avraham, too, should raise his eyes and see the land. Here what Avraham is to behold is not wealth, but eternity. Looking through God’s eyes, as God “shows him” the land, what Avraham sees is that it is a land that will belong to his offspring ad olam, “forever” (13:15). Lot barely lasts a few verses in the city of Sodom before he is removed as part of the war between the 4 and the 5 kings. He will be restored, but only to be removed once again when God destroys Sodom. Lot’s focus on wealth leads to transience, while Avraham’s divine perspective leads to eternity.

(Not that physical prosperity isn’t a value, too. Part of Avraham’s blessing involves the accumulation of a certain amount of wealth. But that is only part of his blessing, a blessing of both physical and spiritual dimensions.)

God offers Avraham an alternative to the physical culture he grew up in. His father no doubt was planning a trip to the land of Canaan for economic reasons. Avraham travels as part of a divinely inspired spiritual journey. At each new physical place, he stops to call out to God and build an altar, making the purpose of his journey clear. God repeatedly asks him to look at things, at the stars in the sky and the sand of the earth, and each time, God is offering him a chance to see things through His divine eyes. We humans have such a small perspective; we think in terms of today and perhaps tomorrow, ourselves, and maybe our children. God lets Avraham see things through the divine perspective of eternity, ad olam. Avraham’s children will not be like the stars of the sky for many, many years, but through God’s eyes, Avraham understands his place in the divine plan of history. During the covenant of the pieces, God shows Avraham the distant future, how his offspring will be enslaved for 400 years. In the words of my father about this text, “400 years! What a long range perspective!” The adoption of such a divine perspective is exactly the goal God mapped out for Avraham at the start, the arrival at a land “which I will show you.”

Veheyeh berachah. Avraham did become a blessing, the first of the 19 blessings said today as part of every Jew’s daily prayer. Such an achievement is true continuity, true eternity. Lot and Sodom don’t live on. But Avraham does, through us. He was blessed to have become eternal in this way, and he serves as a blessing for others by beginning for us a special relationship with the eternal God, by paving the way for our own spiritual journeys toward a more divine perspective on life.

Parashat Noah: From Noah to Avraham

2009-10-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

Noah is like a small child, and Avraham like a grown one, says the midrash Breishit Rabbah. For Noah is said to “walk with God” (Genesis 6:9), holding God’s hand for assistance, while Avraham is said to be strong and independent enough to “walk before God” (17:1) to have the initiative to help God forge the path ahead.

Noah is nothing if not passive. His name means “rest.” He has no voice; God speaks to him but, unlike Avraham, who argues with God, Noah never answers back. God tells him how to build the ark, and Noah builds it exactly that way. The Zohar compares Noah to Shabbat; like Shabbat he does not take an active part in the world, but simply exists, floating his passive way into survival.

For now, this is what God is looking for. God is looking for someone who will not act like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but who will simply obey, who will be tamim, blameless or blemishless, pure and obedient.

God is not yet looking for a true partner in humanity. The flood is a purely divine act. The waters of heaven overwhelm the earth, as God’s power overwhelms all living things. All control lies solely in God’s hands. And so, when God offers the rainbow covenant after the flood, it is not the reciprocal covenant of Sinai where humans play a role, but a purely one-sided covenant, a promise on God’s part not to harm the world in this extreme way ever again.

At the same time, this promise ushers in a new mode of world governance. From here on in, God will restrain Himself; He will never again take complete control of the earth. From now on, humans must become partners with God in running the world. Indeed, immediately after the flood, God commands that humans be responsible for judging and executing murderers. God will continue to be partially responsible for the earth, but from now on, humans must play a role as well, a role in preventing and judging the kind of violence and lawlessness that led to the flood in the first place.

The next step, next week, is Avraham. God’s first command to Avraham is not to be shut in to an ark for protection from the world, but rather to travel the world and influence it, to bring blessing and justice wherever he goes. No wonder the midrash suggests that Avraham was busy making converts in Haran. His job is to be God’s partner on earth. God decides to consult with him over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah for precisely this reason (Gen 18); the role of Avraham and his progeny is to bring justice to the world, to help people begin the process of self-governance. This job requires that Avraham have what Noah lacked, a sense of independence and initiative.

But Avraham’s personality isn’t an entirely new one. The strength of Avraham is that he combines this independent streak with Noah-like obedience. He can argue with God about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, but he can also passively obey, as he does in heeding God’s initial call to leave his home and His later call to sacrifice his son.

God says to Avraham: “Walk before Me and be tamim, blameless” (Gen 17:1). That is Avraham’s challenge (and our own). He must on the one hand, be like Noah, pure and blameless and obedient, and on the other hand, be someone who walks not with God but before Him, forging God’s path in the world with initiative and independence.

Parashat Breishit:Creation and the Individual

2009-10-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

Bishvili nivra ha’olam. “The world was created for me.” That is how the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5) says each individual should feel about herself based on the creation story. When a single human is killed, it is as if the whole world is killed, because the world started from one single person. Each person therefore has infinite value; each person contains the whole world; and each person has a divine spark, having been created b’tzelem elokim, “in the image of God.”

Now this notion can and should lead to great pride. Indeed, some hasidic masters taught that pride was actually a key ingredient for serving God. One can only be active and creative in the world if one believes that one has an essential, unique contribution to make, if one believes in one’s own infinite incomparable value. Self-confidence may be more important than any other attribute in the success of a person.

But pride isn’t the end of the story. What does it really mean to have been made in God’s image? If it means that each of us is great, how are we to interact with one another? After all, there is only one God above ruling over the world, but there are many of us little gods on earth. If we are like God, are we meant to rule over one another?

No. That is why God uses the plural when it comes time to create human beings. Na’aseh adam betzalmeinu. “Let us make man in our image.” Rashi says this plural verb teaches us about God’s humility, that He thought it necessary to seek permission and include the angels in His decision. And, says Rashi, it also teaches us about how we are to act toward one another, not haughtily assuming we can do it all ourselves, but humbly seeking each other’s advice and help, working together as a team, like God did.

How apt of Rashi to read these words, “Let us make man in our image” in this way! At the very moment when humans are being declared to be essentially like God – having been created in His image -- God is showing them what He is like, teaching them how to act like God. How does one act like God? Not by being a ruler. On the contrary, by being humble. By sharing responsibility, by working together, by generally seeking opportunities to act not as an “I” but as a “we.”

It helps to live with both these thoughts in mind at the same time. I am great and god-like, equivalent to the whole world, and capable of tremendous deeds, but I am also humble and limited; I need others to be complete. As God comments in the second chapter of the creation story, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Some midrashim suggest that male and female were initially created as one human and torn apart. We therefore seek each other and need each other like pieces of a puzzle.

With both these thoughts in our heads, we are on the one hand encouraged to take an active part in the world, and on the other hand, freed from the full weight of its responsibility. As Pirkei Avot says, “The work is not yours to finish, but neither are you free from abstaining from it” (2:16). Each individual is called upon not to do the whole job, but to play his or her unique part. We should be eager to act, but not anxious. We should feel at the very same moment that what we do matters, but also that our individual contribution is insufficient.

The world was created for me alone, but it was also created for all of us together.

Sukkot: On Joy

2009-09-30T18:27:00.000-07:00

The Kotzker rebbe is reported to have said that one of the three things we should learn from a child is how to be happy.

Sukkot would be a good time to learn. For Sukkot is called zeman simkhatenu, “the time of our joy.” The Torah does not just say to rejoice on Sukkot, as on other holidays, but Vehayita akh sameakh. “And you shall be only joyful.” (Deut 16:15).

What can children and Sukkot teach us about the nature of simchah, joy? Three things. First, children are happy partly because everything is new to them. They enjoy the world in a way we can’t anymore with our bored, jaded eyes; they are seeing and experiencing everything for the first time, and it is a great love affair. No wonder they don’t want to go to sleep!

We are too old to enjoy the world in this fresh, excited way. But the fall holiday season gives us an opportunity to experience our own version of that kind of joy. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we are intensely aware of our mortality. God is sealing all of our fates; we could die or we could live. Maimonides says that, in order to facilitate repentance, it is proper during this time to consider each day to be your very last. Going through the High Holidays is like surviving an intense hospital experience or a serious illness. It makes you aware of how lucky you are to be alive and well. And it is this knowledge that leads to a kind of joy, the joy of appreciating life’s preciousness, of living it to its fullest. For children the joy comes from the perspective of a first day of life, but for us, it is the specter of the last day which can make us enjoy life to its fullest.

Sukkot, coming on the heels of these other holidays, only further emphasizes this sense of our vulnerability and mortality. We leave our permanent homes and live outside, exposed to the elements, in a flimsy temporary shed which, by design, must have a faulty roof! The sukkah is meant to make us feel how very vulnerable and temporary we are in this world. And that feeling, oddly enough, leads to joy. It leads to joy because there is no other choice; if we are not joyful today, we may miss our opportunity. Life is too short, and we are too frail, not to enjoy every second of life granted to us. Like children, we jump fully and joyfully into the moment.

Children teach us other things about happiness too. Children know that true happiness is only experienced in relationship. From a young age, a baby will coo and laugh at an interactive grown-up but not at an object. Children want toys, but even more than toys what makes them happy are friends. A boring day off from school turns into a party when a playmate appears.

Relationships are the true source of joy, according to the Torah, too. What is considered the ultimate sound of joy, kol sason vekol simchah? The sound of a bride and groom rejoicing, kol hatan vekol kalah. Sukkot is a time for rejoicing among people, a time for inviting guests, the traditional ushpizin, and for enjoying each other in the intimate space of the sukkah after the repairing of relationships during the High Holidays.

Sukkot also celebrates another relationship. Our relationship with God. Through the High Holidays, we have focused on that relationship and worked to repair it. Now we are ready to enter the huppah, the wedding canopy, our sukkah, and rejoice like the hatan and kalah, the bride and groom, celebrating our good fortune in having achieved such intimacy with God.

Our rejoicing on Sukkot is like the joy of children in a third way as well. Children are happy because they are dependent. They know where their next meal is coming from, the grown up in charge. They are not responsible for themselves, so they don’t worry, either about the past or the future, and, free of worry, they relax and laugh and enjoy life.

On Sukkot, we are invited to do the same thing. We don’t permanently give up responsibility. We spent Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur worrying over our past actions and their consequences and planning our future better actions. But that worry time is over now. What is left is only our sense of dependence on God. We no longer say selakh na, “Please forgive,” but hosha na, “Please save us.” Save us; we are dependent on You. The sukkah, with its negligable roof, is not just a symbol of our vulnerability, but also a symbol of God’s protection, and of our joyful reliance on that protection. God is said to spread out His sukkat shalom, His sukkah of peace over us, giving us a sense of security and calm. As Psalm 27, recited daily this time of year, says: “He will shelter me in His sukkah on an evil day.” One tradition suggests that the sukkot God provided for the Israelites in the desert were actually made of God’s clouds of glory. Sitting in the sukkah under God’s sky instead of our permanent slate roofs, we let go for a moment of our sense of responsibility and control. We let God be in charge, God protect us. And it is then that we are able to experience the joy of children, the carefree joy of a child who knows that all will be taken care of.

Such is the joy of Sukkot, a joy borne not out of our brick homes and all their possessions but out of our experience of vulnerability, relationship and dependence. Ashrei yoshvei veitekha. Happy are those who dwell in Your house.

Parashat Ha'azinu/Yom Kippur: On Empathy

2009-09-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

When a child is upset about something, say, a broken toy, how should we respond? According to many child psychology experts, we should not rush to fix the situation, or argue with our children about why they shouldn’t be upset. Instead, we should be with them emotionally, show that we understand their feelings: “That was your favorite toy, and you wanted to bring it to school tomorrow and now you can’t. You must be disappointed.” Once they feel heard and understood, they can solve the problem themselves. Most of the time, what children (and other humans) really want is a sympathetic ear.

God is our model for such a sympathetic ear. We call Him shome’a tefillah, “The One who Hears or Listens to Prayer.” Over Rosh Hashanah, when we called out to Him with our shofars, the emphasis was not on how God fixes our problems, but on how He listens to our broken cries. Mevin uma’azin, mabit umakshiv. “He understands and listens, sees and pays attention.” Throughout this season, we say again and again, shema koleinu, “Listen to our voices.” What we want is for God to hear us.

This week’s parsha begins with its own call to hearing -- Ha’azinu. The root of the word is ozen, “ear.” It is a call for heaven and earth to hear and bear witness to Moshe’s covenantal song, but it rings out during this season also as a call for us all to be, like God, attentive listeners, to open up our ears and hear each other.

God’s capacity as a listener extends so far that it turns into a kind of super-empathy. The tradition says that when the people of Israel went into exile, God went with them. Bekhol tzaratam lo tzar. “In all their troubles He [God] is troubled” (Isaiah 63:9). In Egypt, God “heard their moaning” (Exodus 2:24) and was with them in their distress; the midrash suggests that God chose to appear to Moshe as a burning bush full of thorns to show that, like the enslaved Israelites, He, too, was in pain. In the Yosef story, the Torah tells us in one verse that Yosef was taken into prison, and in the next, “The Lord was with Yosef” (Gen 39:21). As Psalm 91 puts it, Imo anokhi betzarah. “I [God] am with him in distress.”

We are made in God’s image, and are meant to imitate His ways, to strive toward this type of empathy. Perhaps that is what we are doing when we pray for the sick. People struggle with the question of God’s response to such prayers, but perhaps God’s response is beside the point. The point is how the prayer effects the one who is praying, the pray-er. After all, to daven, to pray, is lehitpallel, a reflexive form, an activity that has an impact on the actor. What is that impact? When we pray for the sick in our communities, we are doing two things. On the one hand, we are finding comfort in the sympathetic ear of God, the ultimate listener. On the other hand, we are turning ourselves into little ears of God, reminding ourselves of the pain and suffering being endured by others, teaching ourselves to be with others in their distress just as God is.

I remember as a child praying on Yom Kippur in a small shul and feeling the weight of everyone’s personal pain and woes filling the room. Each of us little humans with our own broken cries comes together on Yom Kippur to voice those cries to a listening, empathetic Ear. We don’t solve each others’ problems on that day, but we are, like God, with each other in distress. And perhaps that is the deepest kind of teshuva (repentance) of all. Gmar hatimah tovah.